Society & Culture - Posted by Futurity-Jenny Leonard on Monday, September 21, 2009 20:38 - 9 Comments 
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Love’s not the only reason women have sex
“We knew motivations for sex were more complex than what had previously been talked about in the literature—having a baby, love, and physical pleasure,” Cindy Meston says. “But we were still astonished by the amazing diversity of sexual motivations—from curing a headache to feeling closer to God to getting their partners to take out the trash.”
TEXAS-AUSTIN (US)—Challenging the idea that women’s sexual motivations are tied exclusively to romantic emotions or reproduction, a new study finds woman are motivated by a wide array of reasons—from boredom to altruism to revenge.
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“Understanding why women have sex is extremely important, but rarely studied,” David Buss, evolutionary psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “One thing that’s interesting about our study is that it goes against the stereotype that men desire sex for pleasure while women have sex only for love or commitment.”
Detailed in their new book Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between), Buss and Cindy Meston, clinical psychology professor, collected personal accounts from more than 1,000 women of diverse educational, ethnic, and religious backgrounds on their reasons for having sex.
“We knew motivations for sex were more complex than what had previously been talked about in the literature—having a baby, love, and physical pleasure,” Meston says. “But we were still astonished by the amazing diversity of sexual motivations—from curing a headache to feeling closer to God to getting their partners to take out the trash.”
Other findings:
- Thirty-one percent of women, at some point, purposely evoked jealousy in their sex partner, compared with only 17 percent of men.
- Eighty-four percent of wives, at some point, said they had sex out of a sense of duty, compared with 64 percent of husbands.
- Thirty-eight percent of women admit to “poaching” someone for a short-term fling.
- Fifty percent of women reported having sex to cure a migraine headache.
Meston believes the results of this research will help inform every woman’s (and her partner’s) awareness of her relationship to sex and her sexuality. The book will be released Sept. 29.
“Our investigation into why women have sex will help both men and women to better understand the sexual psychology of women,” Meston says. “This could help increase empathy and sexual communication between partners, and between men and women more generally. My hope is this research will help people to become better ‘consumers of sex,’ and to make decisions that lead ultimately to more sexual satisfaction and less remorse and regret.”
University of Texas news: www.utexas.edu/news
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9 Comments
The Naughty Bride is all in favor of wives having sex for any reason our little hearts desire, from our own wicked pleasure to all manner of domestic business. The big question becomes, then, what position will get The Naughty Groom to take over balancing the checkbook?
ivan
Some people cure migraine headaches with sex, others do it with drugs, while still others just toss underneath their blankets in agony. I wonder how one can differentiate reasons for having sex from reasons for doing anything else. Given a motive, one can always find a person who will instantiate a response that is sexual, murderous, diplomatic, etc. So is it sufficient to observe a reason in one of the 1000 women to report it as significant, or must it be observed in 5, 10 of these women? Although the sample is diverse, the power law distribution of interests and human behaviors implies that such studies are inherently limited. So I’m not sure how to interpret or trust findings from this study.
Gene
A detail with huge potential value seems to be being overlooked. If sex is clinically effective in treating migraines, as funny as it sounds, it could be very valuable to public health. Indeed, there is a lot of work lost to employers due to migraines. The fact that so many women report independently that they do this suggests that there is something to it. Isn’t the ability for an orgasm (assuming that is the effective treatment) of significant relevance to understanding migraines?
Mike Dufour
“Women are complicated beings”
I’m not arguing that at all.
Tim
Isn’t it possible that the migraines might be caused by LACK of sex? And the sex simply restores harmony? Men already know sex is the best medicine. Some medicine is better than others. But the worst it will ever be is good.
THAH WANNA BE?
why be so complicated when you dont know wot sex is????you have to feel the love and know wat it is????its not like to doo wat you wanna do but its completing your desires…..
AM I RIGHT!!
Pootle
Love’s not the only reason men have sex, either. Yes, yes, we all know that (and I’m a man), but why should women be any different? It takes two to tango, after all, and for every straight man who’s having casual sex there’s a woman doing the same thing… Why do we perpetuate this myth that men are simple and brutish creatures compared to the oh-so-sensitive and romantic female?
BTW, there is research that men find it *harder* than women to distinguish sex from love and tend to become more attached to casual sexual partners than women do.
Frances Morey
I thought that headaches were the excuse when women DIDN’T want to have sex. Does the effect of sex on migraines also happen with “self”-sex? (aka safe sex). If orgasms accomplish the cure wouldn’t a vibrator do?
Well as you know we women are complicated beings so it only makes sense that our reasons for wanting and having sex are not simple. It’s not surprising at all.