Why Women Have Sex (35 page)

In our study, a number of women described having sex as a way to try to “make up” for something that was missing in their early home life. In many cases, this meant using sex to get attention and emotional connection. Some women reported that they used sex to feel the love, care, and attention that they did not get at home:

I was a teenager growing up in an abusive, poor household. I thought that if I was physical with guys it would lead to love, plus I liked the attention they gave me for my body, which was nice. It happened on several instances but one time I remember just laying there and staring up at the sky, waiting for it to be over. I wanted to feel good about it and pretended to be excited, but I really just wanted emotional closeness. I felt dirty, but continued doing it over and over, hoping.

—heterosexual woman, age 28

For others, having sex served the purpose of filling a void—but only temporarily:

I was raised in an abusive household. I grew up believing that there was something fundamentally wrong with me, for which I deserved to be abused. Sex was the first attention I got that, while it was not motivated in any long-term sense, while it was occurring, I felt truly appreciated, wanted, and loved.

—predominantly heterosexual woman, age 25

I was a teenager with low self-esteem. Having had parents who basically ignored me my whole life, I erroneously assumed that sex meant that the person cared about me. The attention from sex was nice, but ultimately, I found out that no, it doesn’t actually mean that the person really cares about you.

—bisexual woman, age 24

And one woman shared an account of how an abusive past made her seek out sex because she simply wanted to
feel
something:

I was in a bad head space where I felt like life and doctors had used and abused me for their own purposes. For a while I didn’t respect myself or my body and I figured, “What the hell, it’s just flesh, nothing more.” So I would completely flash anyone and everyone or behave in a raunchy manner just because after all it was just flesh and completely meaningless. I lost my virginity in the same mindframe. [It was] like, “What the hell, the opportunity presented itself.” It lasted all of maybe forty-five minutes, [then] he fell asleep and I just got dressed, sat there for a while, like okay now what? [Then I] went off to find some friends to have lunch with. I guess I just wanted to feel something and to feel degraded was to feel something.

—heterosexual woman, age 24

Just as some people look externally, assessing their resources and social standing to judge their own self-worth, some people determine how they feel about themselves by whether someone loves them romantically. Because there is no guarantee that any love will last forever, this puts their self-esteem in a rather precarious position. If a woman’s entire self-esteem is based on another’s love for her, then she risks feeling extremely depressed and worthless if that person’s love ceases. Even for people who do not put all their self-esteem eggs in another’s love basket, having someone stop loving you can be psychologically bruising.

Depending on the level of loss, most people who have suffered rejection go through a period of mourning during which they seek ways to comfort themselves. Some turn to friends for comfort, some rely on alcohol or chocolate, and, according to our study, some seek sex. As one woman in our study wrote, “The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else!” Many women in our study relayed stories about
how they used sex to heal their love wounds. Their experiences were all unique.

For some women, having sex with someone else after a relationship ended helped restore their self-esteem:

Whenever I get hurt by someone I really care about I end up having sex with someone else. It helps me get over that person and move on. It also helps me feel better about myself, especially if the person left me for someone else. It makes me feel like I am still desirable and it wasn’t me that made him leave for someone else.

—heterosexual woman, age 19

I had just gotten out of a really bad relationship, and was feeling pretty bad about myself. It was the typical post-relationship blues, feeling rather unlovable and unable to see a point where another person would want me or be attracted to me. When I met [this guy], I didn’t particularly like him and wasn’t particularly attracted to him. However, he showed some interest, so we started hanging out. Before long, we started having sex. I continued to lack any real feelings towards him, but enjoyed feeling like someone wanted me.

—heterosexual woman, age 24

For other women, having sex to restore their self-esteem after a breakup provided only a very short-lived fix:

My ex had unceremoniously dumped me on my birthday, opting to date someone his family would accept. I felt abandoned, unwanted, not good enough and, perhaps most importantly, undesired. Months of depression ensued. With time I began to feel a return in my self-esteem, but couldn’t shake feeling unlovable. During the summer vacation I ran into a childhood friend who I knew had an intense decade-long crush on me. Perhaps it was the loneliness, perhaps it was the alcohol, but I became convinced being with him would erase the feelings of rejection installed by my ex. Surely he would have that type of power, after all he did manage to cultivate the
ten-year crush on me. In the end, I temporarily felt a boost in my sense of self-worth, however the feelings of loneliness were replaced with guilt and shame. I tried to find a way to feel loved; instead I found a way to cease loving myself.

—heterosexual woman, age 24

And for some women, it did not serve the intended purpose at all:

I’ve actually had rebound sex several times. I thought it would help me forget about that other person, or even erase that person from my body by having another’s imprint upon it. It didn’t actually do that, of course, it was simply sex with another person. I still missed the old lovers just as much as I did before the act.

—heterosexual woman, age 23

Whereas some women have sex to make up for what is psychologically lacking or to restore a sense of self-worth after a breakup, others have sex to achieve a true sense of power.

Sex for some women affords them a tremendous sense of power, and that feeling of command and dominance motivates them in the sexual realm. One woman in our study captured this theme eloquently:

It’s mostly a matter of feeling capable of initiating sex and demonstrating power over the person you have sex with, even if that person is a long-term partner. In many ways sex is about power, power to give your partner pleasure and take it from them, and power to feel attractive and desirable. I don’t think it’s unusual to have sex at least partly for this reason.

—heterosexual woman, age 22

Power is not always an end in itself. Rather, it is a way that women can exert control and influence over a sexual partner. Sometimes the control occurs within the context of an existing romantic relationship:

For a female, it’s easy to keep a man in control through sex. You can be equal, withhold it from him, etc. I was with a controlling boyfriend, but we were equals when it came to sex, and I could even tell him what to do when in most cases that wasn’t an option.

—heterosexual woman, age 19

In other cases, a feeling of supremacy comes from simultaneously commanding a sexual partner and beating out another woman for sexual attention:

This happened shortly after my husband and I split up after he had an affair. I engaged in a threesome with a man and a woman as a way of getting back at him. He never found out and that was never my intention. The threesome happened as a result of my wanting to prove to myself that I was still desirable and could be wanted by someone. I liked the idea of it being a taboo act and something I had never tried before. I had no interest in the woman and we did not interact with each other in any way, our attentions were both focused solely on the male in this encounter. I experienced a feeling of power when I was able to distract his attentions away from her to have intercourse with me.

—heterosexual woman, age 29

And sometimes the power comes not merely from outcompeting other women, but from succeeding in sexually attracting a powerful high-status man:

He was the kind of guy all the women wanted to be with. He’d walk into a room and all the attention was focused on him. When he focused his eyes on you, you couldn’t help but feel like the most important person in the world. I’d known him all my life, but we had never been more than acquaintances. But one day he focused his gaze on me, and I couldn’t resist him. The idea of him, the most important person in my peer group, wanting me, a wallflower, generated a surge of power within. I felt important, like his equal.

—heterosexual woman, age 24

Power may not simply come from dominating others. Some women have sex because they feel that it is a sphere of their life over which they can wield control:

For awhile while I was suffering with bulimia I was having serious control issues and it felt good to me at the time to have complete sexual control over someone, especially a man.

—heterosexual woman, age 23

The opportunity to breathe life into a dying man, once loved in youth, is a powerful exchange—a promise of immortality for the dying and elevation to a higher spiritual plane for the living.

—heterosexual woman, age 58

I had sex with a couple of guys because I felt sorry for them. These guys were virgins and I felt bad that they had never had sex before so I had sex with them. I felt like I was doing them a big favor that no one else had ever done. I felt power over them, like they were weaklings under me and I was in control. It boosted my confidence to be the teacher in the situation and made me feel more desirable.

—heterosexual woman, age 25

Power is a prominent thread in many erotic romance novels. Romance novels constitute a more than $1 billion industry, and this genre of fiction sells more copies of books than any other, including mysteries. In 2004, for example, romance novels constituted 55 percent of all paperback books sold in the United States. They are translated into dozens of languages and sell in more than one hundred international markets. And 95 percent of the consumers of romance novels are women, so the books provide a unique window into women’s sexual psychology.

Although the love story between the heroine and the hero is the central plot driver in romance novels, it is fascinating to examine how the writers—almost exclusively women—portray women’s sexuality. Readers identify with the heroine as a powerful and compelling object of male sexual desire. The heroine has sexual control because the hero’s overwhelming passion for her ensures his sexual fidelity to her. In essence, the
hero becomes dependent on the sexually powerful heroine. The heroine’s sexual power is especially enhanced because of the nature of the hero who is mesmerized by her—he is typically ruggedly handsome; masculine in face, body, and behavior; exceptionally high in social status (a prince or an extraordinarily successful businessman); and fabulously wealthy. In short, he has all of the attractions that would have been critical to women across cultures and throughout human evolutionary history.

In many erotic romance novels, the hero uses some measure of physical force, “taking” the heroine sexually, despite her protestations and resistance. A few psychologists argue that because some women find these forceful sexual submission depictions to be arousing, they reflect psychological pathology or socially internalized gender scripts that urge women to link sex with submission to men. The actual scientific evidence, however, supports a different interpretation. Psychologist Patricia Hawley studied forceful sexual submission fantasies in a sample of nearly nine hundred women. She found that women who tended to have and to enjoy these sexual force fantasies, far from being submissive or pathological, in fact were more dominant, more independent, and higher in self-esteem than other women. Women who were less socially powerful had fewer sexual fantasies in which they were forced to sexually submit. Hawley concluded that the erotic allure of women’s forceful submission fantasies reflects feminine power rather than weakness, since the man in the fantasy is provoked uncontrollably by her sexual attractiveness, allure, and irresistibility.

Although the heroine in romance novels holds sexual power over the high-mate-value hero, there is also, almost paradoxically, a way in which she yields or submits to his uncontrollable sexual passion for her. This fusion of sexual power and sexual irresistibility through submission occurs frequently in erotic romances, and was cited by women in our own study as a reason they have sex: