Why Women Have Sex (14 page)

—gay/lesbian woman, age 18

Other women in our study described virtually identical experiences. They reported that having sex to feel emotionally bonded in a failing relationship usually did not work. Often it had the opposite effect, making one or both people realize how emotionally (and even physically) unconnected they had become.

If a couple does feel connected, however, then having sex can certainly serve as a way to intensify their bond:

Having sex with someone creates a special bond with that person which is unattainable any other way. I would do this to further how involved I am in a relationship, and to show [my] vulnerability.

—heterosexual woman, age 25

I felt like I was starting to fall in love with this girl. I loved to share things with her, whether they be stories of things in my life, or experiences that we had together. We connected so well mentally and emotionally that . . . I wanted to be connected to her in a sexual sense as well.

—gay/lesbian woman, age 20

Many women who wrote their accounts of having sex for love and emotional bonding did not distinguish between the two:

I almost always have sex in order to feel connected with someone on a physical and emotional level. I feel connected with them before having sex and want to be connected to them as much as possible. It creates the fine line difference between having sex and making love. When I am in love with someone, I connect with them [in] multiple ways and having sex is one of them.

—heterosexual woman, age 24

I do not have sex if I am not in love and to me, being in love means desiring to coalesce with the person for whom I feel such strong emotions. The joining together of two does not simply mean physically, but also mentally and emotionally. Sex is a way of fulfilling all of these aspects at once.

—heterosexual woman, age 23

Indeed, feelings of connectedness trigger a sense of peacefulness and relationship security that is not unlike the emotional experience of love. Feelings of both love and bonding ward off feelings of loneliness and
depression, and they can make a person feel that he or she is part of a team, or one of two halves of a perfect whole:

Being completely in love with another where you want to become one—one inside each other—spiritually and physically, exploding to become inside out.

—gay/lesbian woman, age 43

These themes of “oneness,” “connectedness,” and feeling “whole” expressed by the women in our study are remarkably similar to those that appear in Aristophanes’ definition of love from Plato’s
Symposium
. According to the dialogue’s account, when humans began life, they didn’t look as they do today. Instead, each had four arms, four legs, and two faces on a cylindrical neck. With all their appendages they could run quickly and they were mighty in strength and force; so mighty that they plotted to displace Zeus and the other gods. In retaliation, Zeus sliced them all in half and had Apollo turn their faces around and tie up the cut skin in the middle, forming a navel. Thereafter they forever longed to reconnect:

Now when their nature was divided in two, each half in longing rushed to the other half of itself and they threw their arms around each other and intertwined them, desiring to grow together into one, dying of hunger and inactivity too because they were unwilling to do anything apart from one another. . . . Each of them is but the token of a human being, sliced like a flatfish, two from one; each then ever seeks his matching token.

It seems that people have been looking for their other, if not their better, half for millennia.

There are other ways that emotional bonding and sex can be related for women. For example, some women in our study talked about the experience of make-up sex in terms of emotional bonding. Women sometimes wanted to have sex after a fight because it helped to reestablish connection with their partners:

My boyfriend and I were going through a very rough patch in our relationship. He was convinced that I didn’t love him anymore.
Though we spent hours upon hours talking things through, I didn’t feel like we were as close as we had been. I felt like I needed to have sex with him to regain some of that closeness that we had shared before.

—heterosexual woman, age 19

Others said that feeling connected during sex intensified their desire and pleasure during sex:

My current relationship is the first time I’ve had sex with love present, where there was truly an intense emotional connection and where sex is an amazing feeling of connectedness. By feeling emotionally connected to my partner in this relationship, it makes the sex more intense and allows us to connect even more completely. The first night when we realized that we were truly in love, both of us desired to have sex to consummate that feeling, to complete ourselves, so to speak.

—predominantly heterosexual woman, age 22

In a study conducted in the Meston Lab, we identified four main categories of events or cues that lead to feelings of sexual desire in women. Three of these were tied to attraction and arousal. For instance, women’s desire was stoked by explicit erotic cues such as reading or watching a sexual story, “talking dirty” with a partner, or sensing that her body was becoming aroused, including by detecting genital lubrication. They responded to status cues, such as seeing or talking with someone powerful or famous. And they responded to “romantic” cues, such as dancing closely, sharing an amorous dinner, and laughing together. The other category of events that increased women’s sexual desire, however, was related to emotional bonding. Feelings of connectedness can cause women to desire sex.

Even if they do not seek out sex themselves, or in cases where their bodies do not respond sexually to their partners’ approaches and other cues, some women derive pleasure from having sex because of what can follow the sexual act—cuddling, tenderness, and feeling connected. Here is how one woman in our study described it:

Being asexual, I don’t normally have the drive to have sex for a physical reason but I do get emotional enjoyment from it when I’m with my partner.

—asexual woman, age 20

Rosemary Basson, a well-known researcher in women’s sexuality at the University of British Columbia, calls this having sex for the “spin-offs.”

One reason women cited for having sex turned out to be quite simple:
The person was a good kisser.
Why kissing might impel a woman to have sex, though, turns out to be complex. Viewed from a primatological perspective, it’s a strange activity. Other than bonobos, humans appear to be the only primate that engages in osculation, as kissing is technically called. Kissing between romantic or sexual partners occurs in over 90 percent of cultures. People kiss with great relish and variety—gently, shyly, affectionately, exuberantly, lasciviously, hungrily. Human lips are densely packed with sensory neurons, more than most regions of the body, but the tongue, nose, and cheeks also come into play. Typically kissing involves information transfer between most of the senses—touch, olfaction, and taste being the most prominent, although sights (luscious lips) and sounds (the English language has no words for this) cannot be ignored.

One study found that kissing caused a drop in cortisol, a stress hormone, indicating a reduction in anxiety. Kissing conveys information about health status, since bad breath can be a sign of disease or ill-health. Women also seem to use kissing as an emotional litmus test, with the outcome revealing whether they should take things to the next level and sexually consummate a relationship. Kissing seems more important for women than for men for this function. Whereas 53 percent of men in one study said that they would have sex without kissing, only 15 percent of women said they would consider sex with someone without first kissing them. Kissing not only provides vital information about a partner, it also can increase sexual excitement, feelings of euphoria, and a sense of emotional closeness.

“Bad” kissing is definitely a sexual turnoff for most women. One
study found that 66 percent of women (as compared with 58 percent of men) admitted that sexual attraction evaporated after a bad kiss. As Alex “Hitch” Hitchens, played by actor Will Smith, told his client in the popular 2005 movie
Hitch
, “One dance, one look, one kiss, that’s all we get . . . one shot, to make the difference between ‘happily ever after’ and ‘Oh? He’s just some guy I went to some thing with once.’ ” In short, kissing provides information to a woman about whether she wants to take things to the next sexual level, reveals something about whether someone will be a good lover, may provide information about health and genetic compatibility, and provides a barometer of relationship quality.

Earlier in this chapter we saw how being in love actually causes changes in brain activity and the release of certain brain chemicals. Can brain chemistry also explain feelings of emotional attachment and bonding? As it turns out, two of the hormones released by the brain during sex—vasopressin and oxytocin—are linked to bonding in animals, and might also play a role in human attachment.

The biggest increases in vasopressin and oxytocin occur after a woman’s orgasm. Vasopressin increases the most in men postorgasm, while oxytocin spikes the most in women. There has not been a lot of research on the effects of oxytocin on human emotions, but some researchers found that taking a nasal spray shot of oxytocin increases feelings of trust and generosity. Others have reported that release of these hormones produces feelings of comfort, safety, and attachment. Oxytocin, which has been called the “cuddle hormone” because it is also released when a person is massaged or caressed, is also thought to possess anti-anxiety and antidepressant effects. Regardless of how it is released, most researchers believe that a natural burst of oxytocin elicits a “feel-good” experience.

Two relationship coaches in New York are banking on this—literally. In 2004, Reid Mihalko, the cofounder of Cuddle Party, began hosting parties at which people, mainly singles, pay thirty dollars for the opportunity to cuddle others for an hour or so. Apparently about ten thousand people have snuggled strangers in the past few years in hopes of
rediscovering nonsexual touch and getting an oxytocin fix with no strings attached. (The cuddle parties include “cuddle lifeguards.”)

In the research world, oxytocin is best known for the role it plays in maternal behaviors. For example, oxytocin stimulates the uterine contractions that facilitate childbirth, hence its name, which means “swift birth” in Greek. A testament to its effectiveness in this regard is the fact that about 75 percent of American women entering delivery rooms are given synthetic forms of oxytocin, such as Pitocin, to induce or speed up childbirth. In China, which has a much lower incidence of birth-related deaths compared to the United States, cool showers are advised when labor needs a boost. Cool showers stimulate the nipples, which, in turn, cause the brain to produce more of its own oxytocin. It has long been known among midwives that applying ice to the nipples can help release oxytocin. This, too, can help with prolonged childbirth.

Oxytocin also allows the breasts to release milk in pregnant and lactating women and plays a major role in maternal bonding and caretaking in many animal species. Researchers have shown that if you block an animal’s natural release of oxytocin by giving the animal certain drugs, mothers stop engaging in normal maternal caretaking behaviors and completely reject their own offspring. The opposite can happen as well. If you inject oxytocin into young rats that have never given birth or even copulated, they begin to nuzzle and protect other females’ rat pups just as if the pups were their own.

There has been a lot of research linking oxytocin to maternal bonding in animals—from rats to sheep. But many researchers believe oxytocin is also involved in sexual bonding, and not just among nonhuman animals.

Diane Witt, a researcher at Binghamton University, proposes that the release of oxytocin can be classically conditioned to the sight of certain people. Recall the Nobel Prize–winning Russian scientist Pavlov and his dogs. Dogs salivate when they are exposed to food—it plays an important role in the digestive process. Pavlov began ringing a bell every time he fed his dogs, and after a while the sound of the bell alone caused the dogs to salivate. The dogs had been classically conditioned to salivate at the sound
of a bell. Witt believes that, in a similar way, oxytocin can be classically conditioned to be released by the brain with exposure to certain partners.

For example, a woman meets someone and on the first date she decides he doesn’t match up to her ideal—Clint Eastwood—but he’s still acceptable enough to date a few more times. Eventually she decides to have sex with him—and oxytocin is released, so she experiences that “oohhh so good” feeling. After having repeated sex, and oxytocin releases, with the same man, she forms a conditioned association. Pretty soon, just seeing the guy can cause her brain to release oxytocin—without even having sex! Suddenly, “Mr. Acceptable Enough” becomes “Mr. Can’t Live Without.” Some researchers believe that prolonged attachment with a given person actually causes chronically high levels of oxytocin and its close hormonal relative vasopressin, which could feasibly help maintain long-term relationship bonds between women and men.