Basking in the blockquotes for lunch, excuse me.
In the NYT today John Tierney writes of the study/survey done by psychologists at the University of Texas Austin Cindy M. Meston and David M. Buss. A study to be published in August issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior.
They basically asked nearly 2,000 people why they’d had sex, Buss was surprised “by this richness of sexual psychology”. Original Study PDF
Some of the reasons:
I wanted to feel closer to God
I was drunk.
the desire to have a child
to get rid of a headache.
help me fall asleep
make my partner feel powerful
burn calories
return a favor
keep warm
hurt an enemy
change the topic of conversation
It seemed like good exercise
Someone dared me
I thought it would make me feel healthy
The best news is that both men and women ranked the same reason most often: “I was attracted to the person.”
Thank god for that I say.
No matter what the reason, men were more likely to cite it than women, with a couple of notable exceptions. Women were more likely to say they had sex because, “I wanted to express my love for the person” and “I realized I was in love.”
Men were much more likely than women to say they’d had sex to “boost my social status” or because the partner was famous or “usually ‘out of my league.”
And they call women sluts? The truth is out there baby.
Tierney, on the other hand, feels the list is just not complete enough. He seems stuck on Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”.
I just hope he is not gathering too many rosebuds.
To help him out you can also add your own reasons at Tierney Lab
My favorite of course is “to change the topic of conversation”. It works well when getting in too deep, unable to provide back-up for an argument.
So, why do you have sex?
Talk among yourselves.
