Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between)
Cindy M. Meston, David M. Buss
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 0805088342
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
An unparalleled exploration of the mysteries underlying women’s sexuality that rivals the culture-shifting Kinsey Report, from two of America’s leading research psychologists
Do women have sex simply to reproduce or display their affection? When University of Texas at Austin clinical psychologist Cindy M. Meston and evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss joined forces to investigate the underlying sexual motivations of women, what they found astonished them.
Through the voices of real women, Meston and Buss reveal the motivations that guide women’s sexual decisions and explain the deep-seated psychology and biology that often unwittingly drive women’s desires—sometimes in pursuit of health or pleasure, or sometimes for darker, disturbing reasons that a woman may not fully recognize. Drawing on more than a thousand intensive interviews conducted solely for the book, as well as their pioneering research on physiological response and evolutionary emotions, Why Women Have Sex uncovers an amazingly complex and nuanced portrait of female sexuality. They delve into the use of sex as a defensive tactic against a mate’s infidelity (protection), as a ploy to boost self-confidence (status), as a barter for gifts or household chores (resource acquisition), or as a cure for a migraine headache (medication).
Why Women Have Sex stands as the richest and deepest psychological understanding of female sexuality yet achieved and promises to inform every woman’s (and her partner’s) awareness of her relationship to sex and her sexuality.
Triad: Facilitating Short-Term Mating in Men,” European Journal of Personality 23:5–18. 14 They interpret this cultural difference: Penton-Voak, I. S., Jacobon, A., and Trivers, R. (2004). “Population Differences in Attractiveness Judgments of Male and Female Faces: Comparing British and Jamaican Samples,” Evolution and Human Behavior 25:355–70. 15 They discovered that the infants: Langlois, J. H., et al. (1990). “Infants’ Differential Social Responses to Attractive and Unattractive
41:301–9. 257 The average is somewhat higher: Laumann, E. O., Gagnon, J. H., et al. (1994). The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 368–74. 257 One study that questioned men and women repeatedly: Palmore, E. B. (1982). “Predictors of the Longevity Differences: A 25-Year Follow-up,” Gerontologist 22:513–18. 258 A recent study of nearly 2,500 elderly Taiwanese: Chen, H., Tseng, C., et al. (2007). “A Prospective
actually have to learn how to have an orgasm. If a woman is unable to have an orgasm because she is distracted from enjoying sexual sensations, the best way to resolve this difficulty is to explore, perhaps with the help of a therapist, what the various distractions are and how to get rid of them. Here is how one woman described her sexual pleasure after liberating herself from sexual guilt: After years of feeling conflicted about the idea of having sex with someone simply because of
birth defects that require minor surgery in order to open the vagina for sex and other health reasons. The truth about hymens is that they are membranous tissues that cover only part of the opening to the vagina—sort of like a flap of skin. They come in many different shapes and sizes, and they change in dimensions as a woman ages—whether or not she has had intercourse. Some are tough, some are weak; some have blood vessels and bleed when torn, and others do not. Weak hymens can break relatively
partner, for a million dollars. After a long pause, she replied: “Yes, but you’ll have to give me some time to come up with the money!” The punch line highlights the fact that women, too, deem some men to be valuable sexual resources—high-status, handsome men, such as Robert Redford, who is a verifiable sex (and status) symbol. Not surprisingly, women in our study reported having sex not only for money but also as a means of getting a job, a raise, or a promotion. This phenomenon is known as the