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Many findings suggest that men want sex more fre-quently than women. Ard (1977) reported a survey ofcouples who had been married for over 20 years. Hefound that “husbands continued to prefer intercoursemore frequently than wives” (p. 274). In fact, wivesconsistently reported that they were quite satisfiedwith the amount of sex they had in their marriages, butmen on average wished for about a 50% increase. M.Brown and Auerback (1981) likewise found that a ma-jority of husbands (60%) but only a minority of wives(32%) said they would prefer to have sex more often. Amore recent study by Julien, Bouchard, Gagnon, andPomerleau (1992) found that husbands and wivesagreed that the men were more sexually active andfrisky. Even more relevant, Julien et al. (1992) foundthat men were more likely than women to report hav-ing less sex in marriage than they wanted. With a sam-ple of couples ages 51 to 61, Johannes and Avis (1997)found that women were more likely than men to wishfor less frequent sex than they were having, whereashusbands were more likely to wish for more frequentsex than they were having. A study of elderly couplesin Sweden likewise found that men wanted more fre-quent sex than women (Bergström-Walan & Nielsen,1990). Indeed, the authors of that study concluded that“men are significantly more sexual than women, in allages and in all respects” (p. 289).

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Who claimed to be a sex machine to all the chicks? But dating women who are actually into you is a good policy.

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> Therefore, I am ass-raping the servant by withholding sufficient pay to him while enjoying my clean house.

That's how I understood Roko's reasoning as well. Though, to be fair, marriage is analagous to unionization in this metaphor. Expect to start paying out more for less, on average.

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Same logic applies to guys giving girls attention to wrap them around their finger -- it needs to be enough to make her feel like she can win you over, but not so much that she feels that it'd be too easy and that you were too desperate.

We don't have a pill that men take to boost their level of attention-giving, but we do have social pressure especially since the early '90s rise of third-wave feminism about how guys have to cut the macho silent crap and start truly showing how much they care about the lady in their life. And then we're surprised when girls find guys increasingly less appealing and overly eager.

It may take awhile for the understanding of how misguided that was to spread its way through the male population, but before a decade or two we'll be back to normal.

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Really,

I appreciate that some of the above posters are private dicks who are sex machines to all the chicks, but is there really anyone left who questions whether men, as a group, want sex more frequently than women, think about it more frequently, and feel more upset if they go without it for a week or more?

I wonder if there has always been an association of sex and the risk of disease. I read Tyler's link on MR this week to Boswell's description of regularly getting STDs and trying to avoid them by staying away from whores and concentrating on a quality woman with high entry barriers.

The idea that "what the world needs now, is sex sweet sex, it's the only thing that there's not enough of" depends on the disease risk. It's one thing to say that monogamites should focus on doing it more with each other; it's another to say that people should have sex when

-they know very little about their partners' histories,

-the only disease protection is a layer of latex,

-we don't know how to cure two major known diseases,

-we don't know the long-terms risks of other known infections, and

-we probably don't yet know about the existence of some existing sexually delivered infections

-we are probably creating new diseases right now by how we have sex.

I'd say we should keep in mind the holocaust of gay guys in San Francisco and New York in the '80's and '90's, the huge costs of treating AIDS patients today, and the next disease coming from we know not what, before we say there is not enough sex.

On the other hand, if you are saying that wives should put out twice a day for their husbands, then amen, brother.

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I anxiously await the FDA approval of flibanserin, a drug originally investigated as an anti-depressant because of it's effects on brain serotonin levels (regular readers of OB will recall the discussion about the exaggerated claims for the beneficial effects this category of drugs has on clinical depression). Flibanserin has the additional effect of increasing brain levels of oxytocin. As Hanson has pointed out earlier: Immediately before orgasm, levels of the hormone oxytocin surge to five times their normal level. I, and other members of ISSWSH, hope this drug will be the first genuine help we have had to offer for the large population of women who remember how much more they once desired and enjoyed sex, and who are anxious to bring their own levels of desire to that of the partner they love, for mutual benefit. Of course, this may be another of Big Pharma's scams; I can't say whether the studies are truthful. What I can say is that there are millions of women who, rather than calculating how they can most effectively withhold sex, desire to maximize their own motivation for this pleasurable activity.

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If I hire a servant to clean my house, I want to get a clean house. In exchange the servant imposes a cost on me in the form of a salary.

Now that servant is probably going to want a higher salary than I (or the market) will may him. In fact, I'd say his lust for money is insatiable (to the first-order).

My desire for a clean house on the other hand is rather finite.

Therefore, I am ass-raping the servant by withholding sufficient pay to him while enjoying my clean house.

Is this the reasoning?

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> What about reporting bias?

That's going to be a problem. How does one usually get around reporting bias? Perhaps asking people in situations where their replies are guaranteed to be anonymous would help, or maybe asking marriage counseling psychiatrists who have insight into what's really going on.

> Also, from a normative standpoint, is it a problem if I want people to wait on me hand-and-foot without pay,

Marriage imposes costs on a person -- in particular the other person is expecting them to be monogamous. If person A expects person B to be monogamous, but person A has a much lower appetite for sex and refuses to have sex at anything like the rate person B would prefer, then person B is losing utility, whilst person A is getting exactly what they want, and in addition they can use (implicit) promises of small temporary increases in sex to extract other concessions from B.

In short, B is getting ass-raped.

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Fair enough; step by step.

What about reporting bias? At least from my perspective our culture seems to promote sexual appetite as an essential part of being a man and to comparatively not promote it (perhaps discourage it) as part of being a woman. This should lead to consistent overstatement of the gap.

Also, from a normative standpoint, is it a problem if I want people to wait on me hand-and-foot without pay, but they are withholding this from me in an attempt to force me to pay them? Would it be problematic if I sold a drug that made people happier to wait on me for free?

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The pharmaceutical industry promises to deliver more and better orgasms for women and Ms Canner can only see yet another evil plot by the patriarchy? What a miserably one track mind such people have.

And how typical of the mainstream media to pursue a purile idea of balance by recruiting such a moron just to provide a completely ridiculous 'on the other hand' quote and try to manufacture controversy.

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Cohabitors have more sex than married people. That would fit Robin's "bargaining power" theory.:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/353919

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Also, if there are a very large number of blue-balled husbands around, then as far as I am concerned I have learned what I need to know: marriage is a bad idea for a man. It matters less why that is the case (manipulation vs. differing appetite)

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Well let's not try to run before we can walk: first analyze the extent to which married men are being denied sex that they want, then if that is the case, move on to more refined conjectures.

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There is more than one "evolutionary reason" to have sex: reproduction, status signaling, ego boosting, pair bonding, dominance, sustenance (prostitution, housewife) etc. I think you simplify things too much by lumping these together.

For example, sex is important part of pair bonding, and probably primary reason women want sex in the beginning of relationship more than later, and often feel so bad about one-night stands that they start wanting some commitment from men before sex.

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What if demand for sex differs on average across the two populations?

It isn't necessary to posit manipulative social arrangements to get a difference in aggregate demand. Just note, to make breakfast the chicken is involved but the pig is committed.

How would these two conjectures be distinguished by survey data?

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Throughout most of history and most human societies philandering by men was if not expected at least tacitly permitted.

This removes a wife or girlfriend's monopoly and suggests that if this hypothesis is true, Robin, that it is true only recently and the hypothesis should account for why there has been a change in market structure.

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