Why people have sex: It feels good
 

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Original Story Here

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations. It's more about lust in the body than a love

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 the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. 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 men and women, 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 and their own money to study the overlooked why behind sex while others were spending their time on the how.

"It's 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, the study's co-author. "That's not what I came up with in my findings."

Forget thinking that men are from Mars and women from Venus, "the more we look, the more we find similarity," said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. Goldstein, who wasn't part of Meston's study, said the Texas research made a lot of sense and adds to growing evidence that the vaunted differences in the genders may only be among people with sexual problems.

Meston and colleague David Buss first questioned 444 men and women — ranging in age from 17 to 52 — to come up with a list of 237 distinct 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 by women.

Once they came up with that long list, Meston and Buss asked 1,549 college students taking psychology classes to rank the reasons on a one-to-five scale on how they applied to their experiences.

"None of the gender differences are all that great," Meston said. "Men were more likely to be opportunistic towards having sex, so if sex were there and available they would jump on it, somewhat more so than women. Women were more likely to have sex because they felt they needed to please their partner."

But this is among college students, when Meston conceded "hormones run rampant." She predicted huge differences when older groups of people are studied.

Since her study came out Tuesday, people are coming up with new reasons to have sex.

"Originally, I thought that we exhaustively compiled the list, but now I found that there should be some added," Meston said.

How important is it really to know the "why"?

Isn't it kind of like when the weatherman tells us "the storm front that will hit us this evening is coming from Michigan." :confused: Who gives a fuck where it's coming from? It's like going the grocery store and buying corn flakes & having to listen to some guy tell you where the :curse: corn was grown! Just hand me the corn flakes. And you, Mr. Weatherman...tell me what to expect and try to be somewhat close to correct this time!


Wow...ok, I'm back. Though I still don't really understand why people want to know why, I don't know that it's something that can be answered just once. Today, I want to make love because I am feeling clingy and want to be intimate. All day Tuesday and yesterday evening...I wanted to FUCK! I'm talking rip your clothes, shove my dick in your pussy and make us sweat and scream obscenities at each other FUCK! Why? Different reasons. Sometimes I wanna do it because it feels good, sometimes I need the intimacy and feeling that I'm loved. Sometimes I'm bored and can't sleep. Sometimes I just need a taste of sweet vah-jay-jay juice. Sometimes I need to hear the appreciative moans of a woman enjoying my efforts. I guess that would skew the results of the study if I wasn't monitored over a long period of time and the responses tabulated to reflect an average.

Oh, but it's important for researchers to spend their grant money so they can do more research so they can get more research grant money so they can...