10 Most Important Reasons Women Have Sex, Including The Best Reason, #10

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10 Most Important Reasons Women Have Sex, Including the Best Reason, #10. By Jed Diamond, Ph.D. Contact: [email protected]

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After completing a world-wide study on why people have sex, Psychologists Cindy Meston and David Buss, both professors at the University of Texas at Austin, decided that the topic of "why women have sex" deserved a book of its own. They've woven scientific research together with a slew of women's voices in their new collaborative work, Why Women Have Sex published September 29 by Times Books. They found that there were 237 reasons women have sex. Here are the top 10. "We do bring in men occasionally by way of contrast, but we wanted to focus exclusively on women so that the complexity of women's sexual psychology was not given the short shrift, so to speak," said Buss, a leading evolutionary psychologist. The authors conducted a study from June 2006 to April 2009 that asked women whether they had ever had sex for one of 237 reasons, all of which had emerged in a previous study. About 1,000 women contributed their perspectives. It turns out that women's reasons for having sex range from love to pure pleasure to a sense of duty to curiosity to curing a headache. Some women just want to please their partners, and others want an ego boost. Here are the 10 most important reasons cited in the study: 1. The simple pleasure of it. Men have sex for pleasure and women have sex for love. That message has been circulating for centuries. However, it turns out not

to be true. Women in the study were just as interested in having sex for pleasure as were men. I have in the past had sexual relationships with men who were strictly friends just for the pleasure of having sex. In terms of emotions, there really weren’t any except the fear that the guy might end up wanting more. –Heterosexual woman, age 27. I have been with lots of men in my life—probably close to one hundred—and of all of those men, only one ever learned how to hit my G-spot. I’m now married and love my husband but I keep thinking about sex with the man with the magic fingers! I swear, when he put pressure on that special spot it drove me crazy—I didn’t want foreplay or anything—just more and more penetration. Heterosexual woman, age 50. 2. That Thing Called Love When two people are first together, their hearts are on fire and their passion is very great. After a while, the fire cools and that’s how it stays. They continue to love each other, but it’s in a different way— warm and dependable. –Nisa !Kung woman from Botswana What is love? According to psychologist Robert Sternberg, there are three aspects of love: Intimacy, passion, and commitment. Sometimes we have one of these, sometimes two, and in the most complete kind of relationship we have all three. For my twentieth birthday, my boyfriend took me out to an amazing seafood restaurant and we had a really incredible time. He treated me like a princess. I felt so loved, and I was so in love, and all the feelings from the romantic atmosphere of the restaurant carried over to his apartment and we made love on his bed. That may have been the best sex we’ve ever had. –Heterosexual woman, age 20. In counseling men and women over the years, I’ve found that women have a strong need to feel cherished and men have a strong need to feel needed.

3. The Thrill of Conquest. It is not enough to succeed, others must fail.” Gore Vidal. We often think of the male as competing with other males for the prize of mating with the female. But women, of course, also compete for the opportunity to mate with the most desirable males. The reality of sexual competition among women is captured, albeit in exaggerated and artificial form, in the popular television show The Bachelor. Each week, millions of Americans tune in to watch a real-life bachelor select among twenty-five women, who primp, court, date, flaunt, make out, and sometimes have sex, in the hope of capturing a mate in the bedroom and at the altar. My boyfriend loves attention, and early in our relationship he began another non-serious relationship with another girl behind my back. When I first found out about it, I was devastated, but eventually made it my goal to make him realize that I’m the only one he wants. While I was happy to have sex with him, I realize now that I was also doing it in hopes I could prove myself better than the other girl.” --Heterosexual woman, age 18. I wanted to win. My best friend always had guys interested in her in high school. Although I was never really interested in guys, somehow this bothered me. So I began to pursue the same men she did to prove I was as good, if not better, than her. When she would convey interest in a particular guy I would immediately pursue him and win him with the offer of immediate sex. This included heavy petting under a desk during class and intercourse in a closet or hidden area of my high school. –Gay/lesbian woman, age 25. 4. Green-Eyed Desire Sexual competition resolves around rivals, which in its Latin derivation means using (or trying to use) the same river as another— and in the Roman empire, a river was an essential resource to be guarded at great cost. Likewise, women use sex to achieve a variety of psychological, physical, and evolutionary ends, sometimes

engaging rivals in sexual competition over the same desirable partner. But rivalry can, and often does, turn defensive and jealous. Many women pursue sex as a way of dealing with their own pain and desire to get back at a lover who had abandoned them. I was dating someone and they had just broken up with me. I was very upset and felt rejected and like my self-esteem had been hurt. Perhaps a week later I went on a blind date and had sex, and told the girl I had been dating about it (we were still friends) hoping to make her jealous. I didn’t find the woman I had sex with to make her jealous to be attractive and would not have had sex with her if I had not felt I had something to prove. –Gay/lesbian woman, age 27. When I was in my early twenties, my boyfriend of two years and I broke up. He had fooled around with another girl. So I then slept with his fraternity brother—one of his best friends. I told myself that it was to hurt my ex, but in reality, I did it because I wanted him to be jealous and want me back. That backfired, of course. He not only didn’t want me back, but all the buys in the fraternity had a very low opinion of me, including the guy I slept with (sort of a double standard there), but that’s the way it was. –Predominantly heterosexual woman age 30. 5. A Sense of Duty Many women, particularly women over 40, were raised at a time when many believed that it was a woman’s duty to have sex whenever her partner was interested. These beliefs have changed over the years, but women still have sex out of duty. My husband nags about not having enough sex, so I give in and have sex. Such is married life. –Heterosexual woman, age 53. But even young women find themselves in situations where they give in and have sex, even when they’re not turned on to the person. I once had sex with a guy mostly to shut him up. We had had sex once before. We were going to beat at the end of a party at a friend’s house—I think we were both still a bit tipsy. He started making a

move on me and I said I didn’t want to do anything because I had to wake up early the next morning for work, plus our friends were sleeping in the same room. But he kept bugging me, saying it wasn’t tool ate, I still had time to sleep, no one else would wake up. I finally gave in, mostly because I figured he’d keep bothering me for another hour if I kept saying no and if I just gave in, we’d have sex for ten minutes and then I’d get to sleep. –Heterosexual woman, age 24. 6. A Sense of Adventure We often equate adventure and masculinity, but women are just as adventurous it turns out, when sex is involved. I was in college and all my friends had experienced sex and I wanted to know what it was like. Thinking about how everyone in the world knew what sex was and that people started wars and killed over it…it made me curious and I felt a sort of “pressure” to find out about it. –Heterosexual woman, age 24. I was about eighteen, and thought the thought that went through my head at the time was, “Um, wonder what an Arabic or Italian guy is like in bed?” I guess I wanted to know how each race was in bed. Thinking about it now, I know that was stupid. But at the time I had slept with two Puerto Ricans, two white boys, and I wanted to try something new each time I had sex. –Heterosexual woman, age 28. Some women in the study described wanting to have sex with someone as a sort of “relationship screening test.” That is, they wanted to see whether the person was “good enough” in the sack to warrant a relationship. 7. Barter and Trade Although many of us have value judgments of women who trade sex for things they want, the practice is as old as humankind. Stephanie Gershon yearned to explore the Amazonian rain forest before leaving Brazil to complete her college education back in the United States. Her efforts to locate a tour guide who would take her past the edge of the forest, however, came up empty. When a local busboy at her resort started to flirt with her, she questioned him about

the rain forest. Turned out he was very experienced and although she wasn’t truly interested in him, Stephanie decided to encourage his interest as a way to get him to take her into the forest. Her sexual magnetism succeeded. The busboy managed to get out of work, and they left for the jungle. It was amazing. We built homes out of palm leaves. I saw animals I’d never seen before. He taught me the medicinal properties of all plants. We picked fruit off the trees. We swam with and ate piranhas. And of course, we had sex…for almost two weeks. It was a good barter both ways. I got to stay in the jungle, and he got to have sex with a cute American girl. 8. The Ego Boost If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it’s because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that’s the most revolutionary insight of all. –Erica Jong. A woman’s self-esteem affects, and is affected by, her sexuality, her sexual experiences, and her sex appeal. Selfassurance is sexy and sexual success is reassuring. There are deep psychological connections between our sex lives and our sense of self in both sexes. Among men, for example, research reveals that those who experience a bout of impotence, or erectile dysfunction, suffer a tremendous blow to their self-esteem. That’s one of the reason’s Viagra is so popular for men. But women, too, suffer when they feel they are not sexually desired. I had sex with someone who I felt close to because I was feeling alone and lonely. This man was kind and loving to me always and it made me feel better to have him with me, in bed, for a night. We had amazing sex and he would do anything I asked, always. I felt more confident and certainly sexier (as a woman) the following days. It helped boost my self-confidence a great deal.—Heterosexual woman, age 39.

Many women have sex as a way of trying to repair a lost sense of self that occurs when growing up in an abusive household. I was a teenager growing up in an abusive, poor household. I thought that if I was physical with guys it would lead to love, plus I liked the attention they gave me for my body, which was nice. It happened on several instances but one time I remember just laying there and staring up at the sky, waiting for it to be over. I wanted to feel good about it and pretended to be excited, but I really just wanted emotional closeness. I felt dirty, but continued doing it over and over, hoping. –Heterosexual woman, age 28. 9. The Dark Side of Sex: Sexual Deception, Punishment, and Abuse. Humans have dark and disturbing facets in their sexual psychology that cannot be ignored. Many people grow up in abusive families and the abuse impacts later sexual expression. According to Buss and Meston, “An astonishingly large number of women sometimes have sex because men deceive them, drug them, verbally coerce them, or physically force them.” While in college I went out and drank a lot. There was this one guy who I really liked. He fed me all the lies that we are told to know, but at the time I did not think about that. He told me he was not like other guys and he would call me in the morning and he really was into me. He told me how pretty and smart I was and how lucky he would be if we were together. All I really thought was how much I liked the guy and how much I wanted him to like me. I completely bought into his lies. After a few more drinks, we went upstairs and had sex. The next day he did not call me. Then I found out he told all his friends how easy I was. I felt completed degraded.—Heterosexual woman, age 27. My ex-husband was mentally and verbally abusive and coerced me into having sex for most of our fifteen-year relationship. When I would refuse sex with him he would be angry and verbally abusive for as long as three days afterward. Eventually I stopped trying to say no to him because it was easier to give in and deal with fifteen minutes of sex than days of abuse.

I eventually got the courage to leave him. –Heterosexual woman, age 36. 10. Sex as Medicine More and more studies show that sex is good for our health. Sex seems to be good medicine for many things that ail us. I suffer from migraine headaches and although the attacks are few and far between and are generally mild, I find that when I have sex during my headaches, especially when I have a great over the top climax, it goes away before I know it.—Heterosexual woman, age 42. The physical pleasure of sex is one of the best ways for me to relieve menstrual cramping. I’ve had sex for this reason many times as comfort-based motivation—Heterosexual woman, age 47. Having sex during or after a fight with one’s partner can sometimes help resolve relationship differences. Because sex can release built-up anger and frustration, which in turn allows our bodies to return to normal levels of arousal, it can help clear our minds, at least temporarily, of the negative thoughts that caused the fight. A number of studies show that stress can relieve and lower stress levels. But that’s not all. Meston and Buss tell us that “sexercise” not only burns calories, like other forms of cardiovascular exercise, but supplies a host of other health benefits. “It can increase metabolic rate, stretch muscles and increase flexibility, increase energy, help tip the good/bad cholesterol balance in the good direction, increase blood circulation to all parts of the body including the brain, and maybe even lower the risk of having a heart attack and extend life expectancy.” So, what are the reasons you have sex? What are the reasons the woman in your life has sex? How about adding the medicinal qualities of sex to your life?

For more information on the book Why Women Have Sex and the work of Dr. David Buss and Cindy Meston, go to: http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/Group/BussLAB/

Contact: [email protected] Web: www.MenAlive.com