I See Colors During Sex: What Is Sexual Synesthesia?

When I was a competitive figure skater, I would often overthink my sport. I used to trick myself into landing a jump by thinking of anything but skating. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the striped shirt I wanted from the Gap, anything that would distract me.

Similarly, while in the bedroom, I tended to focus too much, to the point of going into a trance-like state. But when I was relaxed, I noticed colorful scenes filling my mind. As my excitement—and arousal—grew, the color, sound and story would build as well.

Sexual synesthesia, like all kinds of synesthesia, is a phenomenon where the senses get tangled together.

Black would take me over the George Washington Bridge, where at night you could peek into apartments big enough to get lost in. I would imagine myself floating inside through the window and lying on one of the luxurious black leather chairs in the living room. Red would take me to a silk factory somewhere in Asia, where I would swim through the fabrics, falling into them face-down. Yellow was a cornfield and I would be wearing overalls sitting on top of a hay barrel. Blue would be a glass shop that sold nothing but beautiful plates and candlestick holders in hues of blue, and everything I touched was delicate. These images, colors and sounds came on unconsciously.

It took years to put a name to my experience of seeing colors during sex.

"Sexual synesthesia, like all kinds of synesthesia, is a phenomenon where the senses get tangled together. Being a synesthete might mean that you can taste words as you speak them, see numbers spread around you in space, or see colors when you have an orgasm," said Clare Jonas, a U.K.-based synesthete and science communicator who also has a Ph.D. in the psychology of synesthesia.

Earlier sexual synesthesia experience

I was never ashamed of masturbating. My mother instilled in my siblings and me permission to make ourselves feel good. She chose her words carefully and explained to me when I was a child that my body was a gift. She said when I got old enough, I would be able to share it with special people in my life. I am forever grateful to have been taught to think of sex in such a positive way.

When I had sex for the first time, my boyfriend was older: I was 18 and he was close to 30. Having sex was not like masturbating. I felt a loss of control, and not in a good way. I didn't heed the advice my mother had given me about only sharing myself with special people—I didn't quite know what I was looking for sexually in another person until I actually found it. The 15 years I've spent in a healthy, active sexual relationship have been a learning experience. After the initial excitement of exploring the newness of each other's bodies, we began a language, a practice, a true give-and-take.

I began to notice that in different positions, I would see a different sex colors—not through my eyes, but through feeling. When on my stomach, I would see the blue scene; on my back, I would see bright red. On top, greens and yellows. I could also hear different styles of music playing like a soundtrack. Stories, some of them strange, would sometimes accompany the colors.

I didn't feel these experiences on my own, but I didn't want to talk much about them to my partner. I did mention it to him, and he thought it was fascinating, but I don't like to talk too much about sex with him when not talking about it works so well. I worried that if I brought it to his attention too much, it might distract us. I also wondered that if I thought about it too much, it might stop happening. What if this was just a strange segment of my brain? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Maybe I had too much matter in one area of my brain over another area. The mind began to wander.

It wasn't until about two years ago when I read my then 11-year-old daughter's favorite book, "A Mango-Shaped Space," by Wendy Mass, that I even heard of synesthesia. The main character, Mia Winchell, is a 13-year-old girl feeling things in color, seeing numbers and letters in different shades. Music, to Mia, comes out as rainbows. I couldn't quite say I experienced that kind of synesthesia, but I understood.

Is sexual synesthesia common?

"Unfortunately, two questions about synesthesia that people usually ask remain unanswered," Jonas said. "First, we don't know how common synesthesia is since not everyone who has synesthesia is aware that others don't experience the world in the same way. Second, we're not sure why synesthesia exists, though it tends to run in families, which suggests that genes might be involved. Since we know synesthetes tend to be different from other people in more ways than just having synesthesia (for example, slightly better memory), one possibility is that synesthesia is a side effect of some of those differences."

Everybody's sexual experience is different, so trying to pinpoint what causes colors to show up for some and not for others is difficult. I don't view what I am experiencing as a negative, but rather as a little extra magic that happens to show up. When I did eventually share the images I saw with my partner, it added curiosity that joined us even closer together.

"Synesthesia is totally harmless and for many people can be beneficial. For example, research on a small group of sexual synesthetes found that they were more likely to feel 'at one with the universe' during sex," Jonas said. "It can be a mixed blessing, though—the same research showed that sexual synesthetes also had lower levels of sexual satisfaction than others, perhaps because they couldn't share the synesthesia they were experiencing with their partner."

After reading my daughter's book, I learned that a friend of mine sees different colors for each letter of the alphabet. Her daughter experiences colors for letters and numbers. Another person mentioned that music comes with color and sometimes taste. But my sound and colors only come during intimate moments and not in aisle six of the grocery store when a great song comes through the speakers.

There is always a name for strange feelings people have, and knowing that "your thing" is "a thing" can take the excitement out of it, but curiosity and Google are irresistible sometimes. Although sexual synesthesia is a real condition, I like to stay a little bit in the dark about it. I want to keep my personal rainbow, full of color, shining bright.