My husband has sex with me while he sleeps

The humble bedroom: where sexsomnia can occur

Anita Sayer’s husband Dan, 24, suffers from sexsomnia, a condition that causes him to caress his wife in her sleep – and even have sex.

And what’s worse: when he wakes up in the morning, he can’t remember it.

In her interview with the Daily Mail, Anita said she pushes her sexually active husband to the other side of the bed up to three times a night, leaving her exhausted and resentful.

When morning comes, Dan is left with a blank expression on his face as Anita tells him the details of her evening.

“People joke about it, but it bothers me,” says Dan Sayer.

“I wake up and look at Anita. I can tell immediately from the look on her face that I’ve done it again. But I honestly don’t remember any of it and I don’t like the fact that I’m upsetting her but can’t control it.”

Dan, who has been married to Anita for a year, says he suffers from sexsomnia every few weeks and when he does, it is often for several nights in a row.

“I usually wake up just in time and am quite surprised at what I’m doing. But if Anita is happy, we might carry on,” Dan explains to the Daily Mail.

The first time Dan got cocky at night, Anita enjoyed the attention, but when she insisted that he didn’t remember any of it, she became a little worried.

Anita even believes that they actually had sex once, and although Dan seemed to be awake, he was fast asleep and unconscious.

“He even had the nerve to claim that it must have been me who instigated it,” she says.

“Sometimes it’s annoying, especially when I know I have a hard day at work and have to get up early. In that case, I either shake him awake or nudge him until he moves to the other side of the bed.”

Sexsomnia was first recognised as an actual illness in the 1990s and four per cent of adults in the UK suffer from the disorder to varying degrees at some point in their lives.

The disorder is a form of parasomnia, which refers to undesirable behavior during sleep, such as sleepwalking, talking and teeth grinding.

Not surprisingly, sexsomnia affects men more often than women.

Matthew Walker, professor of neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, told the Daily Mail: “Just as children often experience night terrors and states of confusion, so do adults. Only adults can be sexually stimulated by a dream or aroused by the mere touch of a partner in bed.”

Extreme cases of the disease can be treated with medication, but Anita and Dan are not at that stage yet.

For now, Anita will continue to urge and encourage her husband to change his nighttime behavior.