The men are rather cuddly, the women more sex. Rubbish
Since the founding of the Kinsey Institute (an American research center on sexuality), conservatives have continued to accuse it of being an instrument of depravity and of leading anti-chastity crusades.
But now the latest study from this institute is presented as a hymn to family values. According to the media, this study, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, shows that promiscuity makes you sad, that engagement makes you happy, and that men prefer love and hugs. Is there any truth in this? Let’s take a look at the numbers.
1.Men love hugs.This is what has captured the most media attention. « Men need hugs more than women », for example the LA Weekly. « These are the guys who prefer hugs », for its part says MSNBC. « Hugs are the key to happy relationships … for men », points out CBS News.
I wouldn’t put my hand to cut it. The study did not measure everyone’s needs and aspirations. And on the issue of hugs, the difference between men and women was actually small.
Men whose relationships were characterized by a high number of kisses and hugs were about 12% more than other men to say they were happily married (see Table 6). Dave Johns, a colleague of mine from Slate, is a perfect example. Women who are often hugged and kissed were 9% more than other women to say they were happy in their relationship.
If in the articles that have been published there seems to be a gap between men and women on this issue of hugging, it is because their authors combine hugs and caresses in their analysis. They point out that these two elements – which the press release of the institute summarizes under the word « tenderness » – increase the probability of saying that they are happy in their relationship about twice as much for men than for women.
But in the questionnaire used for the study, the « Caresses » fall within the sexual sphere. You are asked how many times you have been sexually « touch » and fondled by your partner. (See Table 1). It’s more than tenderness. A kiss is only a kiss, but a thigh is a thigh.
On the other hand, while in the questionnaire, the hugs come from the partner of the interviewee, the hug is formulated as a mutual activity: « My partner and I hug and hug each other ». When men who say they are happy in their relationship hug their partner, it may sometimes be the consequence of their happiness, not the cause.
2.Staying together for a long time makes you happy. According to the press release, « The longer the people interviewed had been together, the happier they said they were – men and women ». The media have almost all deduced that the « Men and women are all the happier in their relationship since they have been together for a long time ». None of these statements are strictly true. For women, the average level of happiness declines during the first 15 years of the relationship and does not begin to rise until the twentieth year. (See figure 1).
Children could explain part of this – 90% of couples surveyed had them. But the thorniest question is: why, in women, the curve of marital happiness declines for 15 years, but not the curve of sexual satisfaction?
Remember that this study is about couples. If your relationship deteriorates and you separate or divorce, you are no longer in the sample. As couples like yours leave the field of study, the population questioned therefore becomes, on average, increasingly happy.
Let’s take a look at the divorce chart from the US Census Bureau. About 40% of marriages end before the fortieth year – half of these fail before the 15th year, the other half after. (See Table 2 of the Census Bureau report.) Fifteen years is therefore roughly speaking when the average divorce occurs. And that’s when the couple’s happiness curve begins to rise for women.
The curve of sexual satisfaction is different. It increases for women throughout their relationship. (See figure 3.)
But is it because sex is improving, as the Los Angeles Times inferred, or is it because women are becoming easier to satisfy?
According to the study, a woman has a 40% chance of being sexually satisfied in the first year of her relationship, 86% in the 40th year.
After 40 years of marriage, the women are all menopausal. In summary, women are therefore all the more satisfied as their libido decreases and their partner ages. « It may be that women’s satisfaction increases over time because their expectations change »admits the author who coordinated the study, Julia Heiman, who heads the Kinsey Institute.
3.Sexual promiscuity makes you unhappy. The authors explain that « The more partners men have in their life, the less likely they are to be sexually satisfied. » In the teeth, the petticoats! « Sorry Charlie Sheen »chuckles a journalist.
But this study does not concern single men nor newlyweds. She carries on couples together for a long time.
The men interviewed were between 39 and 70 years old, with a median age of 55. It was therefore not a question of studying men in their hunting season, but their subsequent satisfaction, once engaged in a relationship, in relation to their hunting phase.
The happier they were back then – the more sexually satisfied they were – the less likely they were to be satisfied in the monogamous sex life in which they are now confined. Is this then an indictment against sexual promiscuity or against monogamy?
We can also interpret it the other way: men who change partners behave this way because they are difficult to satisfy. They are therefore even less satisfied once hired.
« The search for better partners or better sexual experiences can be explained by a lack of satisfaction », notes the author. « But having more partners can also come from different requirements, stemming from a greater experience. » Or, to put it less nicely, higher requirements.
4.Men who care about their partner’s pleasure are happier. According to the authors, “the men who most wanted their partner to reach orgasm were also those who said they were the happiest in their relationship ”. But the men in the study were not asked if their partner’s orgasm mattered to them. They were asked a slightly different question: « How important is it for your partner to reach an orgasm when you have sex? »
For the men, who understood that it was a question of assessing importance, the answer was obvious. Everyone knows that you are supposed to say that your partner is important. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the maximum importance, women rated the importance of their partner’s orgasm at 7.96, men at 8.53. (See Table 2.)
Why did some give a rating less than 10? Maybe because they felt that their partner’s satisfaction is not that important.
But more likely because they downplayed the importance of orgasm in general. The breakdown of the male / female results confirms this hypothesis: while fewer women said that their partner’s orgasm was important, they were also less likely to believe that their own orgasm mattered.
Why would you downplay the importance of orgasm? Maybe because your partner is having difficulty reaching it, because of age, health, or some other factor. If so, it is probably this underlying difficulty that explains why you are less satisfied with your relationship, not the fact that you did not give a « 10 » to the importance of your wife’s pleasure.
The causal link can also be reversed, as with hugs: the happier you are with your wife, the more you care about her pleasure.
5. Men want love, women want sex. « Poll shows men need hugs and women love sex », headlines Time magazine. « Men seek hugs, women seek sexual satisfaction », we find on the side of the Boston Globe. « Sexual satisfaction is more important for women », explains MSNBC.
But the study doesn’t measure what women like or seek. It measures their degree of satisfaction. More men than women consider themselves happy in their relationship, while more women than men say they are satisfied with their sex life. Which doesn’t mean that women value sex more, it could actually mean the opposite.
Explanations. In previous studies, the authors concluded that « Men usually said they were more satisfied with their sex life than women, regardless of the socio-cultural context. » What this study does not confirm.
How is it different? « This is the first international study on individuals in a relationship that focuses on men and women of advanced age, together for a median of 25 years. »In short, the men and women interviewed were all engaged in long-term relationships.
Suppose that, on average, men place more importance on sex than women, while women place more importance on love than men. Single, men are therefore more likely to seek sex than women, and therefore more likely to get what they want. They would therefore be more likely to consider themselves sexually satisfied.
But if we lock these same men and women into exclusive relationships, the outcome is different. In each couple, the lowest common denominator wins. The man cannot have more sex than the woman wants to give him. She cannot have more love than man gives her.
The result: a higher rate of sexual satisfaction for women than for men, and a higher level of satisfaction with the couple relationship for men than for women. While the former give more importance to love and the latter to sex.
Each of the theories I have outlined here can be questioned. My cynical interpretations of the numbers might not stand up to close scrutiny. But I think the rosy interpretation of the media wouldn’t resist it either. Love and sex are way too complicated. Men and women too.
By William Saletan
Translated by Aurélie Blondel
Don’t forget to share the post !
