You may think that it sucks how, in your relationship, your girlfriend refuses to have sex with you on a regular basis since the flame has softened a bit. But you know what’d be even worse? If she sleepwalked into sex with strangers AND didn’t sleep with you. Yes, this actually happened.

Sleep medicine experts have successfully treated a rare case of a woman having sex with strangers while sleepwalking.

The behaviour had disrupted the lives of the woman and her partner. At night while asleep, the middle-aged sleepwalker – who lives in Australia and cannot be identified for reasons of confidentiality – left her house and had sexual intercourse with strangers. The behaviour continued for several months and the woman had no memory of her nocturnal activities.

Circumstantial evidence, such as condoms found scattered around the house, alerted the couple to the problem. On one occasion, her partner awoke to find her missing, went searching for her and found her engaged in the sex act.

“Incredulity is the leading player in cases like this,” says Peter Buchanan, the sleep physician at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, who handled the case. But a combination of factors convinced him that the case was a real sleepwalking phenomenon, including the distress of the couple, and an in-depth clinical evaluation.

How about we take the strangers she’s sleeping with to jail? I’m totally understanding of wanting to get an occasional fish in the barrel in your sexual conquests, but when a woman’s pick-up line involves her muttering indecipherable nothings and slobbering all over herself while tugging at your crotch, maybe you should exercise a bit of restraint and not just automatically leap in genitals first. Unless you’re a zombie fetishist. But then you probably have much bigger issues than restraint, don’t you?

[Newscientist]