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Love and commitment can make sex physically as pleasing for a lot of women, based on a Penn State Abington sociologist.
In a number of interviews, heterosexual women between 20 and 68 and from a range of backgrounds asserted they deemed love was essential for maximum satisfaction in both sexual relationships and marriage. The benefits of finding yourself in love having a sexual partner tend to be more than simply emotional. Most of the women within the study asserted love made sex physically more pleasurable.
“Women said that they connected love with sex and that love actually enhanced the physical experience of sex,” said Beth Montemurro, associate professor of sociology.
Women who loved their sexual partners also said they felt less inhibited and much more willing to explore their sexuality.
“When women feel love, they might feel greater sexual agency because they not just trust their partners but because they believe that it’s Alright to have sex when love is present,” Montemurro said.
While 50 women from the 95 that were interviewed said that love wasn’t necessary for sex, only 18 from the women unequivocally thought that love was unnecessary inside a sexual relationship.
Older women who were interviewed established that this connection between love, sex and marriage remained important throughout their lifetimes, not just in certain eras of the lives.
The link between love and sex may show how women are socialized to see sex as an expression of love, Montemurro said. Despite decades from the women’s rights movement and an increased awareness of women’s sexual interest, the media still send a strong cultural message for ladies for connecting sex and love and to look down upon women and girls who have sex beyond committed relationships.
“On one hand, the media may seem to exhibit that casual sex is OK, but simultaneously, movies and television, especially, tend to portray ladies who are experiencing sex outside of relationships negatively,” said Montemurro.
In an identical way, the media often portray marriage as largely sexless, although the participants in the study said that sex was an important part of their marriage, according to Montemurro, who presented her findings on Aug. 19 at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
“For that women I interviewed, they seemed to say you’ll need love in sex and also you need sex in marriage,” said Montemurro.
From September 2008 to July 2011, Montemurro conducted in-depth interviews with 95 women who lived in Pennsylvania, Nj and New York. The interviews generally lasted 1 hour 30 minutes.
Although some of the women who were interviewed said they’d sexual relationships with females, most of the women were heterosexual and all sorts of were involved in heterosexual relationships.
Funds from the Career Development Professorship and the Rubin Fund supported this work.
