Why we want sex: motives, gender and context

Hatfield, Luckhurst and Rapson asked people why they have sex, and took the answers seriously. The reasons turn out to be layered, social, and more similar across genders than the stereotypes suggest.

Based on Hatfield, Luckhurst and Rapson, in the Interpersona archive · 3 min read

The question behind the question

Sex research often asks how often, how safely, with whom. Hatfield, Luckhurst and Rapson asked a prior question: why? Their archive paper, "Sexual Motives: The Impact of Gender, Personality, and Social Context on Sexual Motives and Sexual Behavior", starts from the idea that behaviour without motive is only half a description. Two people can do exactly the same thing for opposite reasons, and the relationship feels the reason, not just the act.

The motives people report cluster into recognisable families. Some are about the partner: love, closeness, commitment, wanting to give pleasure. Some are about the self: physical pleasure, stress relief, curiosity, reassurance that one is desired. Some are about the social world: status, duty, pressure, revenge, keeping a partner from straying. Most encounters, honestly examined, mix several.

Gender: different weights, shared list

The stereotype says men want sex for physical reasons and women for emotional ones. The research picture is less tidy and more interesting. Men and women endorse largely the same list of motives; the differences are in how strongly each motive is weighted on average, and those averages conceal enormous individual variation. Plenty of women rank pleasure first and plenty of men rank closeness first, which anyone designing a study, or sharing a bed, should keep in mind.

Hatfield and her co-authors were also interested in where motives lead, including risky sexual behaviour. Motives like reassurance-seeking and approval carry different risks than motives like pleasure, which is one reason motive research matters to health, not only to relationship advice.

Personality and context do quiet work

The paper's title gives its argument away: gender is only one of three forces. Personality shapes what sex is for, so a sensation-seeker and an anxious attacher can be in the same relationship wanting recognisably different things from the same evening. Context shapes it too: a new relationship, a long marriage, a reconciliation and a holiday do not produce the same motives, even in the same person.

This is the part of the research couples most often find relieving. A mismatch in desire is frequently a mismatch in motive, and motives can be talked about. "I want to feel close to you" and "I want to feel desired" are both requests for sex. They are asking for different experiences, and each partner usually finds the other's motive easier to meet once it is named.

What the study cannot prove

Motives are gathered by asking people, and people are imperfect witnesses to their own reasons; social desirability bends the answers, especially on this subject. The findings describe the samples studied, in their cultures and era, and motive research since has widened both. Treat the categories as a vocabulary for thinking, which is how the paper earns its keep, rather than as a diagnosis of any individual.

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Filed under Sexuality and Intimacy.