It's Hotter Away from Home

Arlene, a 27-year-old writer who lives in Philadelphia, recently went to Paris for a weeklong vacation with her 30-year-old boyfriend, a chef in the Philly area. The Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and the Tuileries all lived up to their advance billing, but one aspect of the getaway scored a clear "better than expected": the after-hours activities. "Even though we were running around like crazy seeing all the sights," Arlene recalls, "we still had sex almost every day," compared to an average of once or twice a week back home. "And the sex was better; we both seemed more relaxed."

It never hurts to be in the most romantic city in the world, "strolling home every night to our hotel near the Champs-Élysées" and drinking fabulous French wine, recalls Arlene (not her real name; it was changed at her request owing to the intimate subject matter). But even if your summer vacation is in (fill in the blank with some C-list place; we're trying to avoid angry e-mails from, say, the good people of Cleveland) chances are that being away will do wonders for your sex life. In fact, in Arlene's case the Parisian part of the experience wasn't even crucial. "It's not the only time our sexual connection has flourished on vacation," she says. "Something about leaving the laptop behind, turning the cell phone off and relaxing makes the sex better. Not only that, but being in a totally different environment sparks a sense of adventure and boldness," all of which can add up to sex that is more frequent, more fulfilling and more memorable than what couples have at home.

As more and more Americans weigh canceling their summer vacation because of the highest gasoline prices since the dinosaurs gave their lives to form the stuff, while airlines--charging to check a bag, interminable delays, planes as packed as the Tokyo subway--seem determined to make getting away as unpleasant as possible, psychologists recommend doing all you can to preserve at least a short getaway. Especially for couples who are extra frazzled this year due to financial stress, the renewed intimacy can help power through the anxieties that will be waiting for them back home, whether it's rising food prices, the threat of layoffs or just the usual marital strains.

According to researchers at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction,  sexual response and desire reflect the relative power of two competing and relatively independent systems within the brain: an activating one and a suppressing one. The balance between the two determines a person's sexual response, something Kinsey's Erick Janssen likens to the gas and brake pedals in a car.

One factor that presses on the gas to increase sexual desire and responsiveness is, not surprisingly, mood. For most people, negative mood--sadness, anxiety, anger--acts as a sexual brake, leading to loss of sexual interest and impairment of arousability. Vacations tend to improve mood, if only because you have left the immediate demands of home and office behind; with the brake disengaged, interest and arousability rise like Fourth of July fireworks. Depression and anxiety lower sexual interest and arousability for women even more than they do in men; if the female half of the couple is feeling down in the dumps at home, a vacation that pushes sadness and anxiety aside will be an especially potent way to warm things up. That seems to do the trick for Kristin, a 31-year-old real-estate agent, who says vacation sex is better than at-home sex because it's the only time she and her boyfriend don't argue. "Plus, you can really focus on the relationship and remember why you were attracted to each other in the first place," she says.

When it comes to sexual response, of course, there's plenty of  variation. New research suggests that some people experience an increase in sexual interest when they're in a negative mood. About 9 percent of straight men are more rather than less interested in sex when they're depressed, Janssen and colleagues recently reported, while 21 percent are more rather than less interested when they're anxious. In the case of depression, the greater interest in sex may reflect the greater "need for intimacy, for self-validation, or simply for sexual pleasure" when you're feeling blue, the scientists speculate. Meanwhile, anxiety can fuel sexual desire in people for whom "the post-orgasmic calming effect" is Nature's own Valium. If you or your partner fit into either of these categories, then vacation sex will likely not be better than the at-home variety, where you're surrounded by stress.