  Sexual motivation for women is a wildly complex subject. (Shutterstock.com) |
Think you know what drives women to get it on?
If love, intimacy and procreation come to mind, you’re in for a surprise.
Think boredom, revenge, duty and persuading a partner to take out the trash and you’re on the right track.
Sexual motivation for women is a wildly complex subject, says Cindy M. Meston, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who reveals the shocking reasons behind female arousal in a study based on the personal accounts of more than 1,000 women ages 18 to 87.
Meston, who co-authored the study with evolutionary psychology professor David Buss, says the findings defy the long-standing stereotype that women primarily use sex as a way of connecting with their partner.
The pair is also behind the new book, Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between).
“People just assume that answer is obvious,” says Meston.
“That they want to have sex to reproduce or because they’re in love.”
That, however, is far too simplified.
Guys, you might be shocked to learn that a woman might get beneath the sheets with you to feel closer to God, to remedy a headache or because she wants to test out different penis sizes.
And bad news for some blokes, she might actually be doing the dirty deed because she feels sorry for you. Ouch.
“Some women had sex to make their partner feel good about himself, or they had sex with someone because he was 30 and still a virgin, or he was so ugly no one would have sex with him.”
For a few woman cited in the study, sex with her hubby is also linked to house work.
“He cut the grass and took out the garbage, so she had sex with him,” Meston laughs. “It’s a great example ... If you want to get the nooky, you’d better take the bins out.”
Now brace yourself, Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones might’ve scared the beejezus out of many dudes for her brazen sexual style (the so-called ability to “have sex like a man”) but this isn’t entirely uncommon, either.
The researchers discovered that in the dating jungle, females are not only keen players, they can also be aggressive competitors.
“Some women would go out, find a really good-looking guy and then see which one of them could have sex with him.”
In other cases, sexual passion was triggered by everything from revenge (“To get back at a husband or boyfriend who wronged them”) and jealousy (“having sex with someone to make a partner jealous”), to trying to get a promotion or being taken out for a nice dinner.
“Women use sex throughout every stage of a relationship,” says Meston.
“To attract a man, to keep him from straying, to get rid of him and to get revenge on him. One woman said that the best way to get over a man is to get under another one. The complexity is unbelievable. There is still very much this belief that there’s this giant gender difference — that men have sex for pleasure and women have it for love. That is not the case.
“The No. 1 reason women had sex ... wasn’t because of love, wasn’t because of commitment, and wasn’t to reproduce, but it was for pleasure. That was very refreshing for me. The majority of North American women are having sex for sexual gratification.”
How accurate are your counting skills?
Well, that all depends on what you're counting. It seems men and women clock the notches on their sexual belts quite a bit differently.
According to Norman Brown, a psychologist at the University of Alberta, men in the U.S. report an average of 18 sexual partners, whereas women claim just five.
Why the discrepancy? The researcher suggests it may boil down to different memory types.
Guys tend to use rough estimates when counting past bed mates, which may give their final tally a boost.
Women, on the other hand, are more likely to rely on enumeration, which tends to shrink down the list.
31% of women have intentionally tried to evoke jealousy in their partner
84% of wives admit that they’ve had sex out of a sense of duty
50% said they’ve used sex as a way to cure a migraine
38% say they’ve poached someone for a casual fling
