Love Makes It All: It Drops Male Sex Drive While Increasing It in Women

Romance exists just for some people? Or does it change us all?

A new research shows that men are really more preoccupied with sex than women are, but both genders can change their sexual attitude when involved in an intimate relationship touching their inner feelings. "Men experience a lot of pressure in our society to have sex with a number of different partners, the opposite of what women experience as kind of the gatekeepers of sexuality," said co-author Paul Perrin, a University of Florida graduate student in psychology. "Once they enter a relationship, however, the pressure on men to have sex is not as strong and the pressure on women to not have sex goes away. People in romantic relationships give more importance to their own feelings and their partners' than they do to social expectations about sexual behavior," he said.

The researchers also found that while men are much more likely to perceive sex personally and physically as a real pleasure, women regard sex as violating social taboos. The team found that men and women can change these prescribed gender roles. "Although men showed significantly greater interest in sex as measured by three of the four categories, when sex was examined in an intimate relationship, men and women were more alike than different," he said.

"One example might be the typical stereotype of a guy in a fraternity who is pressured by his fraternity brothers to sleep with a lot of different women and move on. If he were in a romantic relationship, he wouldn't feel as much pressure to have sex with multiple partners. Whereas a woman feels freer to engage in sex within a relationship than outside of one because she runs less risk of being called derogatory names and being viewed negatively by a larger society," said Perrin.

The investigation was made on 219 female subjects and 161 male subjects. They completed 160 questions about sexual behavior and attitudes linked to four aspects: if they regard sex to be personally and physically pleasurable, beneficial in self esteem, a violation of social rules and harmful emotionally, psychologically or physically.

The main sex biased variation was that men presented a much higher likelihood to find sex personally and physically pleasurable. "Though not as frequently talked about, gender roles also restrict men to a narrow range of acceptable sexual behavior in the sense that others deem him immature and unmasculine if he doesn't have frequent sex," Perrin said.

Surprisingly, men were also more likely to perceive sex to be personally harmful emotionally, psychologically or physically, perhaps because riskier sexual behavior and more partners and sex was linked to higher undesirable consequences like unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. "Not surprisingly, women were more likely to believe that being sexually active had negative social ramifications. Women endorsed at higher rates waiting longer to have sex and not engaging in premarital sex, consistent with the notion of women as sexual gatekeepers. Perhaps women are more interested than men are in waiting for the right person and the right moment to have sex," said Perrin.

All this changed inside a relationship. "The biggest implication of this study is that we aren't slave to the gender roles that society imposes on us but have a lot more freedom, especially sexually."