In human sexuality, a sex life is a sector of a person’s day-to-day existence which may involve sexual activity or represent the absence of sexual activity – by Wikipedia.
We think about sex. We fantasize about sex. We spend an inordinate amount of time and money in the pursuit of sex. Is like why do we sleep at night? This is seemingly a simple question. But in fact it is a most difficult question, as of yet unanswered by science. Even for Darwin, the father of evolution, sex was confusing. He wrote in 1862: "We do not even in the least know the final cause of sexuality; why new beings should be produced by the union of the two sexual elements. The whole subject is as yet hidden in darkness."Many seemingly simple questions are, on close inspection, not at all easy to answer. One of these perhaps the most interesting is why we have sex. “We are programmed to do so,” sex therapist Richard A. Carroll, associate Northwestern University psychiatry and behavioral sciences professor says. “Asking why people have sex is akin to asking why we eat. Our brains are designed to motivate us toward that behavior.”
Why do we want sex? The usual answer is, of course, based on the known reproductive function of sex. We want sex because our continued existence as a species depends on it. In 1886, German evolutionary biologist August Weismann proposed one such advantage. He said that sexual reproduction reshuffles genes to create "individual differences" upon which natural selection acts. Basically, sex is an opportunity for two organisms in the same species to pool their resources. Children come from sex, one learns. And the thing about the stork is just a story.
But the facts on the ground undermine this assumption. First, people continue to engage in sex long after they have stopped having children. Humans today have turned this biological incentive on its head. Thanks to a sleuth of traditional and recent birth control options, most of the sex that goes on right now isn’t about procreation. People start having sex long before they plan on having children and continue to do so long after they’ve had them. Long after they’ve had them. The chance of pregnancy, to a degree, limits the pleasure many people derive from their sex lives, or may even impair it altogether. On the contrary, most of those getting busy at this moment would be shocked and upset to find that their joyful acrobatics have resulted in pregnancy. An intense interest in sex and eroticism is not necessarily linked to heightened interest in producing offspring. In fact, those interests are often inversely related. Moreover, many sexual behaviours we commonly engage in, even in the fertile years, are not related to reproduction at all. If sex is for reproduction, how is the mechanism of sexual pleasure organized regarding anal or oral sex? And why are you holding hands with your boyfriend? Children do not come of it. In fact, why does the business of genital, reproductive pleasure spread to all kinds of remote areas not related to reproduction, such as shoulders (very sexy in the nineteenth century), the neck (sexual attraction in Japanese culture), or breasts (contemporary American obsession)? And if a man has a biological urge to find a good mother for his offspring, why do men routinely differentiate between a ‘sexy’ woman and a ‘motherly’ one, and prefer the former to the latter?
“Okay, let’s forget all the biology. Why complicate things? Sex feels good. It is a pleasure. But there’s something that makes it different from other fun stuff, isn’t there? Drinking or playing video games is also fun, but we can do that with whomever, whenever, and no one will feel hurt. But that argument is unsatisfactory as well. It turns out the desire for physical pleasure is NOT the most important reason for sexual activity. A 2010 Sexuality & Culture review of sex motivation studies states that people are offering "far more reasons for choosing to engage in sexual activity than in former times." So physical pleasure is not all that’s involved here. According to a study by Cindy Messon and David Buss published in 2007 in PubMed, after processing the data and eliminating similar or identical answers, they were left with a list of 237 different reasons for sex, including "I wanted to give him an STD,” "I felt sorry for him", "To punish myself", and "I lost a bet."
The truth is, many people are having sex right now without pleasure or any expectation of it. If it’s pleasure you want, if you desire a nice orgasm, you'll get there faster—and cheaper, with more certainty and less risk of pregnancy and disease—through masturbation. So why are you having sex with your partner? And why, when you do masturbate, are you fantasizing about him (or about someone, anyway)? It turns out that the deep experience of sexual pleasure depends somehow on the presence, and conduct, of others. A brutal illustration of this principle can be found in prostitution. On its face, prostitution is a cold business—the epitome of (mostly male) selfish pleasure seeking. The customer buys physical sexual release for money, plain and simple. But the customer can give himself an orgasm, for free. So why pay? And why is the customer's enjoyment increased if the prostitute produces the sounds of enjoyment and sexual arousal? Most importantly is it for inquisitiveness?
Human being are definitely complex. Just as there is no universal reason for eating hot dogs(whether trying to win a contest or scarping them in front of the television out of habit), there is no single reason across time, culture, and history that people engage in sex.
From pleasure to procreation, insecurity to inquisitiveness – today’s reasons for taking a roll in the hay seem to vary as much as the terms for the dead itself. A 2010 Sexuality & Culture review of sex motivation studies state that people are offering ‘far more reasons for choosing to engage in sexual activity than former times.’ And we’re doing it more often too. Its stark contrast from historical assumptions, which cited only three sexual motive: to make babies, to feel good, or because you’re in love.
Today, sexual behaviors seem to have taken on many different psychological, social, cultural, even religious meaning. The idea that humans are hard-wired for sex reflects an evolutionary perspective, according to University of Hawaii psychology professor Elaine Hatfield. “Evolutionary theorists point out that a desire for sexual relationship is ‘weird’ in order to promote species survival.” She said. “Cultural theorists tend to focus on the cultural and personal reasons people have (or avoid) sex. Cultures differ markedly in what are considered to be ‘appropriate’ reasons for having or avoiding sex.
What is your motive? Why do you seek sex? Motivations generally fall into four main categories, according to psychologists at UT-Austin who asked more than 1500 undergraduate college students about their sexual attitude and experiences:
· Physical reasons: Pleasure, stress relief, exercise, sexual curiosity, or attraction to a person.
· Goal-based reasons: To make baby, improve social status (for example, to become popular), or seek revenge.
· Emotional reasons: Love, commitment, or gratitude.
· Insecurity reasons: To boost self-esteem, keep a partner from seeking sex elsewhere, or feeling a sense of duty or pressure (for example, a partner insists on having sex)
Generally speaking, men seek sex because they like how it feels. Women, although they very well may also derive pleasure from act, are generally more interested in the relationship enhancement that sex offers. Researchers describe these differences as body-centered versus person-centered sex.
· Body-centered sex is when you have sex because you like the way it makes your body feel. You aren’t concerned with the emotions of your partner.
· Person-centered sex is when you have sex to connect with the other person. You care about the emotions involved and the relationship.
“Men often start out being body centered,” says University of Hartford adjunct psychology professor Janell Carroll.“But the changes later on. As men reach their 40s, 50s, and 60s, their relationship becomes more important.”
Richard Carroll has been counseling couples with sexual issues for more than two decades. “Women actually become more like men over time in that often, early on, sex is about initiating, developing, strengthening, and maintaining relationships, but in a long-term relationship they can actually focus on pleasure.”
Despite these general observations, research also suggests that there has been a big convergence in sexual attitudes among men and women in recent years. In 1985, Janell Carroll and colleagues found that most college-aged male had casual sex for physical reasons without emotional attachment. She repeated many of the same study questions to a new audience in 2006. “Instead of men and women being at opposite ends of the sexual spectrum, they are now coming together,” she says. “More women might be having sex for physical reasons, but many more men were more likely to say they had sex for emotional reasons.”
Randall Collins, the great American sociologist who’s been writing on the subject for decades (and on whose work many of the musings above are based), argues quite persuasively that human sexuality can be fully understood only in a social context. Human beings, fundamentally, are distinctly, spectacularly social. Lonely and isolated, we cannot survive, let alone thrive. For us, power and meaning emerge through making connections. Sexual desire, thus, is not chiefly aimed at physical pleasure or the production of children, but at connectedness with others. Sexual pleasure is fundamentally a social construct, an emergent property of social exchange.
According to Collins, a thorough understanding of sexuality is only possible if we look at it from the perspective of the social context, rather than examining it from the perspective of the individual. " You and your lover do not bring your sexual pleasure to the relationship. You get sexual pleasure from the relationship. Your body parts do not charge the relationship with sexual pleasure. The interaction charges your body with sexual pleasure. Pleasure is not derived from the physical stimulation of the genitals or from the possibility of giving birth to the next Bill Gates. In its most fundamental sense, sexual pleasure is derived from the synchronized cooperation between people. The whole of human contact is larger than the sum of its participating individual parts—possessing better resilience, greater wisdom, and deeper delights. Therefore we seek that whole everywhere, including in sex. sex is truly pleasurable because through it we may transcend our aloneness and form a meaningful bond with another human being.
References
1. BBC-Earth- The Real Reasons Why We have Sex, 2016
2. 20 Reasons Why People Have Sex-WebMD, 2012
3. The Real Reasons Why We Have Sex- New York Post, 2016
4. Why Do We have Sex? Let’s Count The Reasons- Sex And Psychology, 2016
Authorship:
1. Dr. Amy SL Ooi, 2. Dr. Wilhan Tjiang, 3. Dr. Kris KS See, The Frontier Medicine Institute, Osel Diagnostics, Osel Clinic
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