Why Women Have Sex (22 page)

Studies from the Buss Lab on the motivations for sexual affairs support this. One woman said that having an affair made it easier to break up with her husband. Another mentioned that her affair made her realize that she could find someone much more compatible with her than her husband. And a third said that she had married young; her affair made it crashingly clear that she did not have to settle for a man who did not meet her standards.

Finally, by enhancing self-esteem, the flush of sexual gratification can provide a woman with the courage to leave a bad relationship. When a couple experiences sexual problems, partners often internalize them and blame themselves. As we’ll see in the next chapter, the problem may actually be the product of a mismatch in sexual drives that makes sex an obligation rather than a pleasure.

I am happy now that Charles calls on my bedchamber less frequently than of old. As it is, I now endure but two calls a week and when I hear his steps outside my door, I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, open my legs and think of England.

—Lady Alice Hillingdon (1857–1940)

 

Of course, such sexual conflicts can be resolved—or at least avoided temporarily. Most likely, the person who wants sex will manage to talk or pressure the other person into agreeing to it. Indeed, agreeing to have sex in order to stop a partner’s nagging was a common reason for having sex given by the women in our study:

[My] husband nags about not having enough sex, so I give in and have sex. Such is married life.

—heterosexual woman, age 53

And one benefit of agreeing to sex was that it was often the quickest and easiest way to resolve a conflict in the relationship:

Sometimes, it was easier to just give in and do it when he wanted to rather than put up with listening to him whine and complain about how horny he was.

—heterosexual woman, age 29

I once had sex with a guy mostly to shut him up. We had had sex once before. We were going to bed 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 too late, 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.

—straight-plus woman, age 19

A second scenario for resolving differences in sexual needs is that the person not wanting sex successfully declines the other person’s request. They might do so by pretending to ignore the “come-on signals,” by convincing the person that it’s not a good time, or by simply telling the person “no” or “later.” The success of this approach obviously depends on the partner’s persistence, and how determined or comfortable the person is at saying no. Overtly declining a persistent partner’s request for sex is something many women find hard to do:

It was my first time having sex. I felt pressured to have sex because it seemed like the appropriate time in the relationship to start having sex. I didn’t particularly want to, I just didn’t know how to say “no” without breaking up the relationship.

—heterosexual woman, age 24

This was my first boyfriend, and it was an older man. We had been dating for a while, and he was expecting me to put out, and I knew I was supposed to but I really didn’t want to for some reason. But I didn’t know what that reason was, and I couldn’t think of a good excuse, so I was unable to say “no.” I also had a fear of appearing inexperienced or being perceived as a “goody-goody.” . . . It took me eight years of dating him (and bad sex!) for me to figure [it] out.

—heterosexual woman, age 31

The third potential scenario, which is the topic of this chapter, is that the person not wanting to have sex recognizes their partner’s desire and willingly complies.

What are the motives for, and consequences of, agreeing to unwanted sex? In this chapter, we address these questions and discuss in detail what causes mismatches in sex drive—the reason that propels many women to willingly agree to unwanted sex.

Sometimes mismatches in the desire to have sex arise because a person fears pregnancy, dislikes the sexual activity being suggested, or believes it is too early in the relationship to have sex. In heterosexual relationships it is more often the man wanting to have sex earlier than the woman. One study found that college women, compared to college men, expected to date about twice as long before engaging in sexual intercourse for the first time.

In long-term relationships, couples most often disagree about whether to have sex when the partners have mismatched levels of sexual desire. It is rare for both to always to agree on when they want to have sex. As one woman explained:

I’m married, and when you’re married, you’ve got two people with different sexual needs and schedules. It’s fairly common for one of us to want sex when the other doesn’t, and I regularly have sex because I know he wants it but I’m not particularly interested.

—heterosexual woman, age 27

For some women, a lack of interest in having sex was more the norm than the exception:

My sex drive has been really pathetic so sometimes I push myself to have sex now and then even though I’m almost never in the mood.

—predominantly homosexual woman, age 27

Most clinicians would probably agree that it is wise to select a mate who has sexual needs similar to one’s own. If both desire sex only once every few months, then they are well matched in terms of sexual drive and it is unlikely to become a stressor in their relationship. In fact, hypoactive sexual desire disorder—the term for clinically low sex drive—is only diagnosable if it causes distress. If one partner has chronically higher desire than the other, however, then conflicts and concessions are likely to unfold.

Sometimes couples are fooled into thinking they have compatible sexual needs during the “infatuation” stage of their relationship. This is the period when a couple discovers their attraction to each other and can barely eat, sleep, or think of anything but the loved one. The anticipation of sex can become overwhelming, and the novelty of discovering each other’s sexuality is thrilling. The result is insatiable sexual appetites that often disguise their “real” levels of desire. After a few weeks or months, some people welcome the start of the calmer “attachment” phase, which involves a deeper sense of connection and commitment. After all, spending months or years walking around like a lovesick puppy is not conducive to solving many problems of life, let alone survival.

What often comes as a shock, though, is the realization that while they were both well-matched “sex-starved maniacs” when the relationship began, they actually have very different sexual needs in the long-term relationship. By then, it is often too late—they are bonded. And along with the bonding comes a mismatch of sexual desires:

I have only slept with one person (my current boyfriend of a few years). After a while, the initial spark went away, so sometimes I
don’t feel “in the mood” when he does. I feel sometimes that it’s my duty to make him as happy as I can, so sometimes I have sex when I don’t necessarily want to.

—heterosexual woman, age 20

Some people are, in a sense, addicted to the infatuation stage. They have unrealistic expectations that the feelings of newness and excitement will last forever. When the spark and excitement start to fade, so does their desire for having sex. There begins another mismatch in desire.

The popular conception is that in heterosexual relationships, the woman always ends up desiring less sex than the man. Not true. It is not
always
the woman who wants less sex. There are plenty of couples who show up for therapy because the woman has sexual needs that are not being fulfilled or because she desires sex—just not with her current partner. What is true, however, is that men generally report desiring more sex than do women, and more women than men report a lack of interest in sex.

Studies consistently show that men report higher levels of sex drive than women. This holds true for college students, middle-aged people, and even eighty- and ninety-year-olds. Men are also much more likely than women to say they want more sex than they are currently getting, whether measured among married persons or couples in the early stages of dating. In a study of 1,410 American men and 1,749 American women, 32 percent of women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine reported a lack of sexual interest in the previous year, compared to 14 percent of men in the same age group. Although these statistics are higher than the number of clinically diagnosed cases of hypoactive sexual desire disorder among women in the United States, they are consistent with the fact that desire problems stand out as the number one sexual complaint reported by women.

There have been several explanations offered for why men report higher sex drives than women. The most common reason given is that
men’s high levels of androgens and other hormones are responsible. But there are other possibilities as well. Men and women are socialized very differently when it comes to sex. Traditional sex roles dictate that it is the man who initiates sex, not the woman. So there may be situations where women desire sex but are reluctant to seek it out or ask for it. Men are also often cast as being ever-desirous and ready to have sex. This could actually propel some men to act consistently with these expectations. In other words, some men may aggressively seek sex because they believe that is what successful men are supposed to do.

While it is generally accepted, if not encouraged, for men to engage in sexual exploration once they hit puberty, women are warned of the perilous consequences of sexual curiosity. This fits well with an evolutionary explanation for why men might desire sex more than women. One cardinal feature of women’s evolved sexual strategy is the exercise of sexual choice, both in partner quality and in the timing of when sex occurs. According to evolutionary anthropologist Donald Symons, a ferociously high sex drive would interfere with women’s mate choices, leading them into untimely sex, sex with inappropriate partners, or sexual infidelities that could jeopardize their primary relationship. On the other hand, a high sex drive in men has been favored by evolutionary selection. It propels them into reproductively beneficial sexual encounters, since a man’s reproductive success historically has been more closely linked to the number of fertile women he could inseminate.