SPECIAL FEATURES:
Email
Why women lose interest in sex
Study: The longer a woman is in a relationship, the more her sexual desire decreases. Men reported no such decrease.
Wed, Feb 01 2012 at 11:52 AM
Related Topics:
Photo: David De Lossy/Getty Images
New research is demonstrating what many people already knew from experience: Women lose interest in sex over time, while men don't.
The finding has the potential to help couples, the researchers said. Knowing that many women's sexual desire diminishes over the course of a relationship could encourage both partners to be more realistic about their sex lives, and could help them weather the changes in desire as they occur.
Sex researchers Sarah Murray and Robin Milhausen, both of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, asked 170 undergraduate women and men who had been in heterosexual relationships for anywhere from one month to nine years to report on their levels of relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction and sexual desire. Desire was scored using an established model called the Female Sexual Function Index, which ranges from 1.2 to 6.0.
The participants reported being generally satisfied with their relationships and sex lives, but women reported lower levels of desire depending on the length of their relationship. "Specifically, for each additional month women in this study were in a relationship with their partner, their sexual desire decreased by 0.02 on the Female Sexual Function Index," the authors wrote online Jan. 23 in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.
In fact, relationship duration was a better predictor of sexual desire in women than both relationship and sexual satisfaction. While the 0.02 decrease in female desire was small, it contrasts with male desire, which held steady over time, the researchers said. [6 Scientific Tips for a Happy Relationship]
Evolution of desire
Scientists have disagreed on what happens to desire over the course of a relationship. "Some researchers suggest that both men's and women's desire would decrease over time as relationships move from passionate love to compassionate love," said Murray, the lead study author and a doctoral candidate in human sexuality.
Yet evolutionary theorists predict that male desire should remain perpetually high in order for them to produce many offspring, while female desire should decrease as their attention turns, historically, toward child-rearing.
The new research points toward the latter theory, although longer-duration studies on different groups of people are still needed, Murray said.
Men consistently report higher levels of sexual desire than women. Differences in levels of hormones — testosterone, specifically — are believed to at least partially explain the gender divide.
Hormonal changes that occur as couples move from the passionate early stage to the compassionate later stage into monogamous relationships sometime between six and 30 months may also mediate changes in desire over time. Pharmaceutical companies are currently researching the impact of testosterone on women's desire, but so far, the results have been inconclusive.
Hormones are only part of the story, Murray told LiveScience. "Although they are one piece of the sexual desire puzzle, focusing too heavily on hormones can remove the contextual factors that play into desire, such as whether or not a woman is in a satisfying, loving relationship, and if she has time to feel relaxed, playful and sexy," she said.
Keeping the spark alive
The results could help researchers understand why women who seek sex therapy complain of low desire more than any other problem. Differences in levels of desire within couples, known as desire discrepancy, is a growing area of interest for therapists.
"The concept of an absolute level of 'normal' or 'low' sexual desire is being replaced by the view that low sexual desire is relative to one's partner's level of desire," Murray said. But although desire discrepancy is known to negatively affect overall sexual and relationship satisfaction, very little else is understood about it, such as whether it contributes significantly to infidelity or breakups.
The new research could also help couples manage their relationships over time. In an earlier study, Murray found that women who reported more realistic expectations about what sex would be like in a long-term relationship also had higher levels of desire than those with less realistic expectations. "I think that individuals who expect to maintain the high level of excitement and passion that often exists in the first few months of a new relationship are setting up unrealistic expectations about what is to come and will be more disappointed when the desire and passion take on different forms," she said.
She added that normalizing the fact that sexual desire may decrease over time may help both sexes to understand that this decrease does not necessarily mean anything is intrinsically wrong with their relationship, and may help couples put more effort into their sexual relationship.
"When an individual has had sex with their partner over the course of many, many years, it takes creativity and openness to keep things fresh and exciting," Murray said. "Making time to be together and keep one's sex life as an important part of one’s relationship is very important, and putting in effort and keeping things fun and interesting are crucial components."
A long-term trend?
The researchers cautioned that longer-term studies of desire that include older couples could show different results. Younger women may report decreased desire as they experience their first relationship move away from the "honeymoon phase," for example.
They may also not have experienced some of the benefits of longer-term relationships that may increase desire, such as going on romantic vacations, getting engaged, learning more about their sexual likes — and feeling comfortable sharing those likes with their partner. [5 Ways Relationships Are Good for Your Health]
Murray added that the self-reported nature of the study could have also skewed the results. "It has been theorized that men may be less inclined to admit that they have low desire as this is considered against male gender norms and masculinity," she said. "Thus, it may be that men are not accurately reporting their level of desire and they may too experience a decrease." Murray is preparing to study whether men accurately report their levels of desire.
Follow Jen Abbasi on Twitter @jenabbasi. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook. Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved.
Related on LiveScience:
Related on MNN: Men and women literally see the world differently
You might also like:
Sign in with one of these accounts to add your comment.
EDITORS' PICKS
Advertisement
TODAY'S MOST POPULAR ON
- 13 natural remedies for the ant invasion
- What a grocery store without bees looks like
- Yurts: Everything you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask
- Watch: Sir David Attenborough deals with a band of cannibals the British way
- Facepalm of the week: Non-GMO salt!?
- 7 surprising things Pope Francis has done in his first 100 days
- 5 recipes for garlic scapes
- 10 false facts most people think are true
- 'Lost' city discovered beneath Cambodian jungle
- The dog poem that made Johnny Carson cry
From our sponsor
NEWSLETTER
Advertisement
It's your job to get your orgasms, not a man's job to give them to you.
Ha this is a joke! Just reading this lowers ones desire for love making!
TO: All
RE: Heh
I guess I'm one of the lucky ones.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Who can find a virtuous woman. Her worth is greater than rubies. -- Proverbs 31]
So thats why men have concubines, and women have their babies.
I am amazed at the comments, guess we know what happened to the children and therefore the world. You reap what you sow and you reap more than you sow.
There should be no problem as long as the wife doesn't mind Hubby having a girlfriend .
Yeah, thats what mine thought, now he cant figure out why I dont want sex with him anymore.
One girlfriend after another. They keep getting bored with sex after a while.
Maybe women lose interest because men slow down with the same sort of attentiveness, seduction and foreplay that comes so naturally in the early stages. Nothing turns a woman on more than feeling attractive and desired. The relationship moves from dating where you talk, share, look into each other's eyes and focus on getting to know one another then shifts to plopping on the couch to vegetate in front of the tube....things dry up.
Brraahhahh-vvvOo attilatheblond, You've hit it 100% Bulls-eye! I agree. This is also why children are becoming sexually mature earlier .In my opinion and from personal experience kids see the unlikelihood of many spouses so they tend to makeup for it in a preemptive way. Contractual convention has been a good experiment thus far and now maybe it should be revisited. Lets change "till death" to something a little less final and a little more fun!
This is proof that WOMEN are the ones at the root of infidelity. Men maintain their level of sexual desire towards the same woman indefinitely, but women get "bored" of their men after a very short time, and either cheat outright, or become frigid, causing men to seek out new, more affectionate partners.
So women "cheat outright" but men "seek out new, more affectionate partners?" Now there's the double standard we've all come to know and love.
LOL----you think those bald heads and beer guts are attractive???
they must have studied my wife on this one.
Isn't it also possible that the women in these studies grew older over time and lost initial hormonal desires?
Point out which woman has grown younger over time, please. As a matter of fact, some of us have had cancer surgeries which have robbed us of hormones completely.
Medicine gives Cialys and Viagra to *men* to restore their sexual function yet there is NOTHING which restores women's libidos.
Thus strikes the double standard again.
And a good portion of the women are probably just plain tired!
My experience is that a lot of women feel the opposite way, including me - that it is the man who loses interest, especially when living together. I've been in long relationships and could never live with someone who wouldn't want to have sex at least 5 times a week. It just wouldn't work. From what I hear from my friends, many women feel this way and that their boyfriends or husbands can't keep up with their lust.
And you wonder why they call you a lustful prostitute...?
I think there are women out there like you but they are a rare breed, a lot of guys would give anything to have sex 5 times a week at least.
Pages