Husbands refuse to initiate sex even when their partner is in the mood over rejection fear
- Men in relationships underestimate their partners’ libido, researchers claim
- It’s believed men do not initiate sex because they fear they will be rejected
- By assuming their partner isn’t interested, they are able to avoid rejection
- This rejection could leave them feeling resentful, the study authors wrote
Izzy Ferris For The Daily Mail
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While husbands may complain of being brushed off with a gentle ‘not tonight dear’, their wives actually want to have sex far more often than they realise, a study has revealed.
A team of researchers found that men in long-term relationships often underestimate how often their wives or girlfriends are in the mood.
Scientists think men tend not to initiate sex on some nights when their partner actually is open to the idea – because they are trying to avoid the possibility of sexual rejection, which could leave them feeling upset or resentful.
Researchers found men in long-term relationships underestimate how often their partners are in the mood
By assuming their partner isn’t interested, and therefore not initiating sex, the men are able to avoid this sense of disappointment. But in fact, according to the research, women in long-term relationships or marriages are open to having sex on many more nights than their partners realise.
However on occasions when women are open to the possibility of having sex, they will not necessarily take the initiative – and so their partners could simply fall asleep without realising they have missed their opportunity.
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The research, carried out by psychologists at the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario in Canada, was published earlier this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It consists of three separate studies, following 229 long-term couples, most of whom were heterosexual, ranging in age from 18 to 68 years old.
The couples had been together for around six years on average, and said they tended to have sex once or twice a week on average.
…AND SHE’S THE ‘GATEKEEPER’ IN THE BEDROOM
If a man’s wife is happy, laid-back and curious about life, then the couple are more likely to have a more active sex life, a study has found.
However the husband’s personality doesn’t tend to have much of an effect on how often the couple have sex, according to researchers at Florida State University.
In the survey of 278 heterosexual couples, wives were found to be the ‘gatekeepers’ of sex in relationships. The more agreeable and open they were, the greater the probability they were having sex more frequently with their husband.
In the survey, the researchers noted that previous studies had shown men were more likely to initiate sex. But they found no link between husbands’ personality and frequency of sex. They went on to point out that ‘women’s rather than men’s personality predicts probability of sex in relationships’.
However, when it came to sexual satisfaction, the personalities of both the wives and husbands mattered. The more neurotic they were, the lower their levels of satisfaction.
In the first study, couples kept a diary for three weeks reporting their level of sexual desire each day, as well as their perception of their partner’s level of desire and their level of relationship satisfaction.
The second study saw couples record their levels of desire as well as their perception of their partner’s levels of desire.
In the third and final study, 101 couples kept a diary over the course of three weeks, making notes on the same issues. They were also asked to record each day how motivated they were to avoid sexual rejection.
All three studies showed that men consistently underestimated their female partner’s sexual desire – with scientists suggesting this was because they were attempting to avoid rejection.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, women were able to far more accurately predict whether or not their partner was interested in sex. They also reported being more satisfied in the relationship than their partner believed they were.
Previously, studies have claimed that men tend to perceive greater sexual interest in women’s behaviour than actually exists, known as ‘sexual over-perception bias’.
However, researchers have only ever tested this effect in the context of men’s early encounters with women. The latest study is the first to examine how people perceive their partner’s sexual desire in long-term relationships.
The findings show that, unlike during first encounters, men in long-term relationships actually demonstrate an ‘under-perception bias’. Researcher Dr Kristen Mark said: ‘The assumption that women are going to be the lower-desire partner needs to be thrown out.’
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