It’s a gender stereotype as familiar as the chocolate-crazed PMS lady: guys always want to have sex in the morning. Whenever my boyfriends would insist that they were horniest in the morning I would roll my eyes and chalk it up as another “88th reason we should have sex right now” speech. Finally, when I realized that dudes actually wake up each day with a hard-on, I decided to cut them some slack and research the subject.

Girls, today we’re going to learn a new term. It is Nocturnal Penile Tumescence (hehe), and it is basically the scientific term for random boners throughout the night, including, but not limited to, morning wood. The theory goes that when guys are awake they have the ability to push aside the thoughts that naturally occur as a result of their testosterone surges, while at night they have no such control. There’s also a more specific explanation which states that certain erection-suppressing neurons are shut off during REM sleep and thus enable more erections than usual.

Enough about that; the point is that your partner isn’t just yanking your chain when he insists that he’s the most turned on in the morning. So what’s a gal to do? If you’re like me, the thought of having sex in the morning is a little disgusting. You both have awful breath, your hair looks like a bird’s nest, and you’re not exactly feeling fresh down there.

The typical guy response to these quite reasonable objections is, “I don’t care!” But the problem is, we do care. We don’t want to have to suffer through sex, not in the morning, not ever. It has more to do with our mental state and our ability to get turned on than it does our vanity about how we look. Yeah yeah, you think I’m hot, I get it, but I’m just not into it right now.

Well, after years of going back and forth and having the same conversation over and over, I’ve finally settled on what I think is the best way to deal with the nagging request for morning sex. Just get up a few minutes before him and initiate it! You don't have to do it every day, or even every week, but every once in a while wake him up by fondling him or kissing him. That way you get to experience the rush of female seduction and feel in control of the situation. That mentality alone will transform morning sex into something that you want to do, not have to do.