College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex — they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and “it feels good,” according to a peer-reviewed study in Archives of Sexual Behaviour. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women. Expressing love and showing affection were in the top 10 for both, but they did take a back seat to the clear No. 1: “I was attracted to the person.”
Researchers at the University of Texas spent five years to study the overlooked ‘why’ behind sex. “It has refuted a lot of gender stereotypes... that men only want sex for the physical pleasure and women want love,” said University of Texas clinical psychology professor Cindy Meston, study’s co-author.
Meston and colleague David Buss first questioned 444 men and women to come up with a list of 237 reasons people have sex. They ranged from “it’s fun” which men ranked fourth and women ranked eighth to “I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease” which ranked on the bottom. They asked 1,549 students to rank the reasons on a one-to-five scale on how they applied to their experiences. Men were more likely to be opportunistic — if sex was available they would jump on it. Women were likely to have sex because they wanted to please their partner.