The Strange Thing That Happened When I Had Sex

And it's something that's never happened before.

Anonymous

Published March 27, 2026

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I’ve been dating my boyfriend for seven months now. “Rob” is smart, sexy, thoughtful and he makes me laugh. Although I was wildly attracted to him, we waited quite a while to have sex. I wanted to make sure we had a real connection before we slept together.

Still, I was shocked when we had sex the third time. He was going down on me, and something happened to me that had never happened before. Mid-orgasm, I burst out laughing. (And no, nothing struck me funny.) He didn’t mention it then, but the next morning he brought it up. “Hey, did you … did you start laughing last night? When you came?”

“I did,” I admitted, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know what happened.” It didn’t happen again, so I put it out of my mind … until I came across a recent study about “peri-orgasmic phenomena,” or unusual orgasmic experiences. I wanted to learn more, so I reached out to one of the study authors, Dr. Lauren Streicher, clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, to talk more about orgasms — and what’s normal and what’s not.

Rare But Normal

Streicher and her coauthor, Dr. James Simon, surveyed 3,800 women about their orgasmic experiences and found that 2 percent of women say they experience peri-orgasmic phenomena including physical symptoms like headaches, muscle aches, foot pain and emotional symptoms (including crying, laughing and even hallucinations) during orgasm.

According to the study, physical symptoms include:

Headache (33%)

Muscle weakness (24%)

Foot pain/tingling (19%)

Facial pain/itching/tingling (6%)

Sneezing (4%)

Yawning (3%)

Ear pain/other ear sensation (2%)

Nosebleed (2%)

Emotional symptoms include:

Crying (63%)

Sadness or urge to cry with a positive sexual experience (43%)

Laughing (43%)

Hallucinations (4%)

Yet Streicher thinks that more than 2 percent of women likely experience out-of-the-ordinary sensations during orgasm. “I’d like to do a bigger study, as I think it’s a lot more common than the study showed,” says Streicher, a menopause expert with a popular Substack. “People don’t want to write about it or talk about it. They may be embarrassed or think that this means there’s an underlying problem with the relationship.” However, laughing or crying during orgasm doesn’t mean you’re unhappy with your partner, and physical sensations don’t mean there’s something wrong health-wise (except possibly in the case of headache; see below).

Arousal Versus Orgasm

While orgasmic experiences are personal and subjective, they do have some aspects in common. In medical terms, “orgasm is a physiological response that follows arousal. People confuse libido and arousal,” says Streicher. “Libido is, ‘I want to have sex.’ Arousal is the physical manifestation of being sexually excited that includes increased blood flow to the pelvis and to the clitoris, makes the nerve endings more sensitive and ready to ‘trigger.’”

And there is no orgasm without arousal — the latter must precede the former, and the clitoris is usually the main player. “Most women do need clitoral stimulation [to orgasm],” she says. “That sends signals to the part of the brain that causes pleasure.” The increased blood flow and clitoral stimulation cause both pleasure and pelvic floor contractions that trigger orgasm, followed by an overall sense of contentment and satisfaction. (Ahhhh!)

Symptoms Not to Ignore

So, now that we know what’s normal, there are three symptoms that do warrant a discussion with your OB/GYN:

Pain during sex. “There are two kinds of pain associated with sexual activity … pain that occurs with penetration or pain that occurs only when you have an orgasm,” says Streicher. “There should never be pain with orgasm." And there should never be pain with penetration.

Loss of urine during orgasm (assuming you don’t have a full bladder—pee before you have sex!) may also be an indication of an underlying medical condition.

While it can be peri-orgasmic phenomena, getting a headache during orgasm or during sex is also something to talk to your doctor about.

The Bottom Line

Finally, “there’s a lot about orgasm that we don’t know yet,” says Streicher. “The more we learn about the biology of orgasm, the better it will help us in terms of people who have difficulty with orgasms.”

As for me? I was relieved to learn that my unusual orgasmic experience was normal — and not a sign that anything is wrong with me or my relationship. Remember that if you experience something similar!