Why Women Have Sex (13 page)

Similarly, in some polygynous societies with traditions of arranged marriages, passionate love isn’t banished—it’s simply segregated. In many Arab cultures, a man’s elders choose his first wife for him; his second wife he can choose for himself. Among the Taita of Kenya, it is preferable to be the second or third wife, not the first. The women believe that after his first marriage, a man will be more likely to marry for love and, as a consequence, will favor his later wives—and share more emotional closeness and intimacy with them. The first marriage is made out of duty, while the subsequent marriages can be matches of love.

A testament to the universality of love comes from studies that simply ask men and women whether they are currently in love. Susan Sprecher and her colleagues interviewed 1,667 women and men from Russia, Japan, and the United States to find out if they were in love, and in almost every case, a majority of those surveyed said they were: 73 percent of Russian women, 61 percent of Russian men, 63 percent of Japanese women, 41 percent of Japanese men, 63 percent of American women, and 53 percent of American men—leaving the curious question about the differential between women’s and men’s responses unanswered. Studies examining love in other cultures have also revealed that an overwhelming majority of languages have been used to muse on the experience of love, including declarations of love, love songs, and expressions of pain when separated from a loved one or when love is unrequited.

In the most massive study ever conducted of mate preferences—among thirty-seven cultures located on six continents and five islands, and including 10,047 participants—“mutual attraction and love” proved
to be at or near the top in every single culture, being seen as indispensable in a long-term mate. In a study on the link between love and marriage, psychologist Robert Levine and his colleagues asked college students from eleven nations if they would be willing to marry someone whom they did not love but who had all the other qualities they were looking for in a mate. In nations such as the United States, Brazil, Australia, Japan, and England, the majority of men and women insisted they would not marry someone they did not love. In less affluent nations—the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, and India—a larger percentage of students said they were willing to marry someone they did not love. Clearly, in nations where parental or religious control over marriage is the norm and poverty is widespread, the decision of whom to marry, in some situations, may be more practical than passionate. Psychologists who have studied the concept of love in different cultures find that how men and women define love does not differ greatly between cultures—be it China, Indonesia, Micronesia, Palau, Turkey, Russia, Japan, or the United States. So, men and women define love in similar terms, but do they share similar experiences when falling in or out of love? Despite common images of giggly teenage girls falling in love with boys they barely (or never) met, and stereotypes of women being the ones who are romantically inclined, research shows that men are actually more likely than women to “fall in love at first sight,” which may be the result of an evolutionary adaptation. Men generally are more quickly swayed by physical appearance when choosing a partner than are women, who tend to rely on a wider range of signals, including scent and personality, for the initial spark of attraction. Men in cultures from Argentina to Zimbabwe seek women with small waists relative to their hips, an honest if unconscious signal of a woman’s health and fertility. The qualities women seek, particularly in a long-term mate, take a longer period of time to evaluate. “Love at first sight” is just more straightforward for men.

Beyond that first rush of emotion, men also appear to
stay
in love longer: A study that assessed 231 college dating couples from 1972 through 1974 refuted the stereotype that women are the lovers and men are the leavers. The study found that women were more likely than men to break up a relationship, and they were also more likely to see the
breakup coming well in advance. Consequently, post-breakup, the women were more likely to view the relationship’s demise as having been a gradual process, whereas men saw it as having ended abruptly, seemingly “out of the blue.” And when women looked back on their former relationships, they tended to list more problems than men did.

There is also some evidence to suggest that breaking up a relationship is more traumatic for men than for women. Obviously it depends on the circumstances of both the relationship and the breakup, but in general, after a breakup, men tend to report more loneliness and depression. The authors explained their findings in terms of gender differences in social and economic power. Although the study on breakups was done in the 1970s, women today are still more likely to be dependent on men for wealth and status than vice versa. In this sense, it is more important for a woman to scrutinize whom she chooses for a partner in relation to the potential alternatives—providing a “brake” on instant infatuation. Men, often being in a more powerful position in terms of earning status and wealth, tend to worry less about the impact of such choices. So they, more than women, can “afford” the luxury of engaging in “love at first sight” and staying in relationships simply for the romance. It may also be related to what University of California, Los Angeles, psychologist Shelley Taylor calls the “tending instinct.” Women, either due to biological predisposition or greater cultural acceptance, have a propensity to respond to stress by caring for or turning to other people for support. Thus they have better support networks in place when a breakup occurs than do men.

So love endures and creates intense emotions—both good and bad—and it can alter, at least temporarily, our brain chemistry. But, to paraphrase Tina Turner, what’s sex got to do with it? The answer, according to our study, is a lot. Of the reasons women gave for having sex, they listed “I wanted to express my love for the person” and “I realized I was in love” as two of their top ten reasons. Women wrote many accounts of how they used sex as a way to get love. Sometimes, as hoped, sex brought love and commitment:

I probably lost my virginity out of a need to be loved. I lived in a small town and was pretty neglected by my mother, she had lots of problems of her own. I never really found any boys that I liked all through school and when I met a guy I really liked when I was . . . a freshman in high school, I had sex with him very quickly. I had never even kissed a boy and I went from first kiss to intercourse with him in a month. He made me feel desired, special, he told me he loved me. . . . Luckily it was a good pick; we stayed together for four years.

—predominantly heterosexual woman, age 25

Sometimes having sex did not bring the actual coveted love but, rather, a temporary illusion of feeling loved:

I was extremely naive at the time, and was hopelessly infatuated with my then-boyfriend. Deep down I knew he didn’t care for me as much as I did him, but I managed to convince myself he did, because I wanted to believe it. When I had sex with him, I was elated, almost triumphant, because, to my naive mind, sex was the equivalent of love, and having sex with him was “proof” that he loved me. . . . At the time, that is honestly how I rationalized the decision.

—heterosexual woman, age 25

I was working at my first full-time job and worked with an incredibly sexy guy. I was already a mother . . . and didn’t think I would ever find someone to love me [but] I really fell in love with [a coworker]. . . . He was much more experienced than me and verbally taught me quite a few things about sex.
We
acted on those lessons and I thought he would fall in love with me if I did the things he asked. Some of those things were oral sex and performing a strip tease and talking dirty to him on the phone. I was not very experienced at this time and really thought if I did these things, he would eventually fall in love with me. He didn’t, and I still have feelings for him to this day.

—heterosexual woman, age 46

But sometimes it brought neither love nor its illusion:

I fell in love with a man and thought he would love me in return if I just gave him what he wanted. I had sex with him even though he made it clear to me that he was no longer interested in dating me and just wanted to befriends. I slept with him at least five more times before he finally refused to have sex with me any more, stating that friends just don’t do that. . . . I found the whole experience extremely painful.

—heterosexual woman, age 28

Many women in our study had sex not to get love per se, but as a way of expressing their love for another person:

Sex to express love is about being able to put feelings into actions. With different kinds of love there are different ways to express that love through action. When I physically and/or mentally desire someone I may choose to show that desire through sexual actions.

—heterosexual woman, age 25

And for many others, sex and love were intricately connected:

Um . . . is there any other reason to have sex? Seriously. Love is pretty much it, as far as I’m concerned.

—heterosexual woman, age 35

That love and sex are linked isn’t new. In fact, the connection has been implied since humans first invented writing. In the late 1880s, a small tablet was unearthed from a region that is now Iraq. Inscribed on the four-thousand-year-old tablet is what historians believe to be the oldest love poem yet found. In the poem, a priestess professes not just her
love
but also her
lust
for a king:

Bridegroom, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet.
You have captivated me, let me stand trembling before you;
Bridegroom, I would be taken to the bedchamber.

Apparently, the priestess’s rather forward manner did not scare off the king, as later she writes:

Bridegroom, you have taken your pleasure of me.
Tell my mother, she will give you delicacies;
My father, he will give you gifts.

Yet, while love and sex go hand in hand for many women, it is certainly not the case for all:

When I first started having sex, I thought it equaled love and commitment. I felt that way towards my partner. I have changed my mind recently.

—heterosexual woman, age 28

Research has even taught us something about which women are less inclined to require love or emotional involvement before sex. Women who are most open to sex without love tend to be extroverted in personality, and more open to new experiences of all sorts, including trying new and exotic foods and enjoying traveling to other cultures.

Although many women do not require or seek out love before having sex, women, more than men, believe that love should accompany sex. In the Meston Sexual Psychophysiology Lab, over seven hundred college students were asked whether they would agree or disagree with the statement “Sex without love is okay.” Approximately half of the students were of European ancestry and half were of Southeast Asian ancestry. Among both cultural groups, men were significantly more likely than women to agree that sex without love was acceptable. Psychologist David Schmitt and colleagues noted similar findings in a massive study involving fifty-six nations.

Findings from a study conducted in the Buss Evolutionary Psychology Lab also indicate a gender difference in the love-sex link. One hundred men and one hundred women were asked to think of people they knew who had been, or currently were, in love. With these people in mind, they were asked to write down five acts or behaviors that the lovebirds had performed that reflected or exemplified their love. An interesting gender
difference emerged: Whereas only 8 percent of women nominated “having sex” as an act of love, 32 percent of the men nominated sexual love acts. This finding reveals that there is at least one sense in which sex and love are more closely linked for men—sex seems to spring to mind as a more salient feature of love in the minds of men than it does in the minds of women. So although women are more likely to see love as a prerequisite for sex, men appear to be more likely to see sex as a defining feature of love.

Just as many women in our study said they had sex to give or get love, many women also reported having sex to give or get a feeling of emotional connection. They said they “desired the emotional closeness and intimacy” and they wanted to “communicate at a deeper level,” “feel connected to the person,” “increase the emotional bond by having sex,” and “become one with another person.” Their responses reflect a common theme—a desire to attain or enhance an emotional bond with a mate through sex. Once again we found that, contrary to gender stereotypes, there were no substantial differences in how frequently college-aged men and women said they had sex to forge a stronger emotional bond.

Some women had sex to try to form an emotional connection in order to salvage a relationship:

It was a long-distance relationship that I just couldn’t admit was not worth the hassle and [was] going to end it.
We
had sex because it was pretty much all we did on the rare occasion that we saw each other. I hoped it would bring us closer together and make us think we would really make it. [It] didn’t work.