Male sex drive stories a myth, researchers say

The assumption that men have higher sexual desire than women overall is not consistently supported by the data in the context of relationships, write experts Kristen Mark and Julie Lasslo in a new article that looked at 64 different studies on sexual desire written since the 1970s.

The authors say desire ebbs and flows between both partners for a variety of reasons. Men who feel insecure about a relationship might be less ready to initiate sex, while desire in both partners can be affected by factors like childbirth or illness.

“We’ve got these gendered expectations around, they’re doing a disservice to both men and women,” said Mark, who directs University of Kentucky’s sexual health promotion lab in the U.K. College of Education’s Department of Kinesiology and Health Promotion. “When men have lower sexual desire, they’re not meeting society’s expectation to always be ready for sex. And then for women, it’s also problematic, because when women have more desire than their partners, it can feel foreign to them for a variety of reasons.”

The same societal tropes are also problematic for same-sex relationships, Mark said.

“It’s not useful to make claims about large groups of people,” she said. “It’s better to look at individual differences and acknowledge every relationship will have ups and downs, regardless of orientation.”