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Sexual Attitudes Differ Whether One Is
in Or Outside of a Relationship
So long, Venus and Mars: Once they become a couple, men and women
are from the same planet, a new University of Florida study finds.
The study confirms that men are more preoccupied with sex than women
are, but both genders get in touch with their inner feelings when
they bond in an intimate relationship.
“Men experience a lot of pressure in our society to have sex with a
number of different partners, the opposite of what women experience
as kind of the gatekeepers of sexuality,” said Paul Perrin, a UF
graduate student in psychology and one of the study’s researchers.
“Once they enter a relationship, however, the pressure on men to
have sex is not as strong and the pressure on women to not have sex
goes away.”
Expected gender roles give way to partners’ romantic feelings for
each other, which turn out to be a lot stronger than society’s roles
for them, he said.
“People in romantic relationships give more importance to their own
feelings and their partners’ than they do to social expectations
about sexual behavior,” he said.
The study, titled ‘My Place or Yours?’ published in the April
edition of the journal Sex Roles, found that men are much more
likely than women to find sex personally and physically pleasurable,
while women are more inclined to think sex violates social taboos.
Too often, these sexually restrictive gender roles become
self-fulfilling prophecies, he said.
But the study also found that men and women can change when it comes
to conforming to prescribed gender roles. Although men showed
significantly greater interest in sex as measured by three of the
four categories, when sex was examined in an intimate relationship,
men and women were more alike than different, he said.
“One example might be the typical stereotype of a guy in a
fraternity who is pressured by his fraternity brothers to sleep with
a lot of different women and move on,” Perrin said. “If he were in a
romantic relationship, he wouldn’t feel as much pressure to have sex
with multiple partners. Whereas a woman feels freer to engage in sex
within a relationship than outside of one because she runs less risk
of being called derogatory names and being viewed negatively by a
larger society.”
The study involved 219 women and 161 men in an introductory
psychology course at UF. They answered 160 questions about sexual
behavior and attitudes relating to four different areas: whether
they considered sex to be personally and physically pleasurable, a
benefit in creating positive feelings about oneself, a violation of
social injunctions and personally costly in terms of having negative
emotional, psychological or physical consequences.
The biggest gender difference was that men were much more likely to
find sex personally and physically pleasurable, the study found.
“Though not as frequently talked about, gender roles also restrict
men to a narrow range of acceptable sexual behavior in the sense
that others deem him immature and unmasculine if he doesn’t have
frequent sex,” Perrin said. “Witness the popular 2005 film comedy
‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin.’ ”
Men also were more likely to consider sex to be personally costly,
perhaps because they engage in more risky sexual behavior, Perrin
said. The more partners and the more sex one has, the more likely
one is to see the consequences of unwanted pregnancies and sexually
transmitted diseases, he said.
“Men in our sample appear to walk a fine line between wanting the
risky sex that society says they should have and paying the price
for having had it,” he said.
Not surprisingly, women were more likely to believe that being
sexually active had negative social ramifications, Perrin said.
“Women endorsed at higher rates waiting longer to have sex and not
engaging in premarital sex, consistent with the notion of women as
sexual gatekeepers,” he said. “Perhaps women are more interested
than men are in waiting for the right person and the right moment to
have sex.”
But attitudes both for men and women changed when attention shifted
to how they felt once they were in a relationship. “Because gender
roles have existed for hundreds and hundreds of years, we kind of
take them for granted and assume this is the way society is and the
way men and women should act,” he said. “The biggest implication of
this study is that we aren’t slave to the gender roles that society
imposes on us but have a lot more freedom, especially sexually.”
Jim O’Neil, a University of Connecticut professor of family studies
and educational psychology, praised the study. “How refreshing to
review important empirical research that dispels myths, common
stereotypes and casual impressions about men’s and women’s sexual
values and relations,” he said.
Bron :
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/530810/?sc=lwtr