Dating, Sex and Marriage – Latest Research

Dating, Sex and Marriage - Latest Research Reports

Edited by Jonathan D. Kantrowitz

Published by Tsadek Press

Copyright 2014 Jonathan D. Kantrowitz

8.5 x 11, 194 pages

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Description:

Learn how the color red attracts both men and women. Learn about the elusive G-spot. 

How, when and where couples ge together, how long they stay together, and what they do when they are together - all the latest research on these topics is included here.

The table of contents tells the complete story:

Table of Contents

  Dating Preferences

Height                                                             

Appearance, Resources, Status, Education

Personality                                                      

Race and DNA                                               

Politics                                               

Lack of Willingness to Commit     

The Color Red                                               

Speed Dating                                                  

Settling For Less                                           

Online Dating                                                 

Who Should Pay for Dates              

Being True to Yourself and Your Partner   

Too Much Commitment vs. Emotional

Distance                                                        

Hookups                                                        

Casual Sex                                                              

Stay-Overs, Cohabitation and Marriage

Stay-Overs                                                   

Marry Versus Cohabitate                    

Marriage Versus Non-Marriage               

Getting Married       `                                 

Love and Romance                                     

Marriage and Conflict                                

Cheating                                                       

Sex

Sexual Activity                                     

Sexual Behavior                                          

Condoms and Lubricants                           

Oral Contraception                                    

Ovulation and Sex                                       

Women’s Sexual Problems                        

Last Minute Additions – Latest Research

Sample reports:

Height matters – a lot

Studies of online dating suggest that physical attraction is a key factor in early relationship formation, but say little about the role of attractiveness in longer-term relationships.  Meanwhile, assortative coupling and exchange models widely employed in demographic research overlook the powerful sorting function of initial and sustained physical attraction.  This article (http://papers.nber.org/papers/W20402?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntw ) observes the effects of one physical characteristic of men--height--on various relationship outcomes in longer-term relationships, including spouses' attributes, marriage entry and stability, and the division of household labor.  

Drawing on two different cohorts from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the authors show that (1) height-coupling norms have changed little over the last three decades, (2) short, average, and tall men's spouses are qualitatively different from one another (3) short men marry and divorce at lower rates than others and (4) both men's height relative to other men and their height relative to their spouse are related to the within-couple distribution of household labor and earnings.  

These findings depict an enduring height hierarchy among men on in the spousal marriage market.  Further, they indicate that at least one physical characteristic commonly associated with physical attraction influences the formation, functioning, and stability of longer-term relationships.

Love makes sex better for most women

Love and commitment can make sex physically more satisfying for many women, according to a Penn State Abington sociologist.

In a series of interviews, heterosexual women between the ages of 20 and 68 and from a range of backgrounds said that they believed love was necessary for maximum satisfaction in both sexual relationships and marriage. The benefits of being in love with a sexual partner are more than just emotional. Most of the women in the study said that love made sex physically more pleasurable.

"Women said that they connected love with sex and that love actually enhanced the physical experience of sex," said Beth Montemurro, associate professor of sociology.

Women who loved their sexual partners also said they felt less inhibited and more willing to explore their sexuality.

"When women feel love, they may feel greater sexual agency because they not only trust their partners but because they feel that it is OK to have sex when love is present," Montemurro said.

While 50 women of the 95 that were interviewed said that love was not necessary for sex, only 18 of the women unequivocally believed that love was unnecessary in a sexual relationship.

Older women who were interviewed indicated that this connection between love, sex and marriage remained important throughout their lifetimes, not just in certain eras of their lives.

The connection between love and sex may show how women are socialized to see sex as an expression of love, Montemurro said. Despite decades of the women's rights movement and an increased awareness of women's sexual desire, the media continue to send a strong cultural message for women to connect sex and love and to look down on girls and women who have sex outside of committed relationships.

"On one hand, the media may seem to show that casual sex is OK, but at the same time, movies and television, especially, tend to portray women who are having sex outside of relationships negatively," said Montemurro.

In a similar way, the media often portray marriage as largely sexless, even though the participants in the study said that sex was an important part of their marriage, according to Montemurro, who presented her findings Aug. 19 2014  at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

"For the women I interviewed, they seemed to say you need love in sex and you need sex in marriage," said Montemurro.

From September 2008 to July 2011, Montemurro conducted in-depth interviews with 95 women who lived in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. The interviews generally lasted 90 minutes.

Although some of the women who were interviewed said they had sexual relationships with women, most of the women were heterosexual and all were involved in heterosexual relationships.

Middle-Aged Women Missing Passion (and Sex) Seek Affairs, Not Divorce

When middle-aged women seek extra-marital affairs, they are looking for more romantic passion, which includes sex — and don’t want to divorce their husbands, suggests new research to be presented at the 109th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

“Being happy in marriage is far different than being happy in bed,” said Eric Anderson, a professor of masculinity, sexuality, and sport at the University of Winchester in England and the chief science officer at AshleyMadison.com, a popular website for those interested in having extra-marital affairs.

In their study, Anderson and his co-authors focus on 100 heterosexual, married, females between the ages of 35 and 45, and their conversations with potential suitors on AshleyMadison.com, in hopes of determining what drives this subset of women to infidelity.

The researchers found that the large majority of women — 67 percent — were seeking affairs because they wanted more romantic passion, which always included sex.

“But, the most surprising finding is that none of the 100 women were looking to leave their husbands,” said Anderson, who co-authored the study with Matthew H. Rafalow, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of California-Irvine, and Matthew Ripley, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Southern California. “Instead, they were adamant that they were not looking for a new husband. Many even stated their overt love for their husbands, painting them in a positive light.”

According to Anderson, he thought women might be looking for sexual affairs because they were unhappy with their husbands or because they felt unloved by their husbands. “But this was not the case,” he said. “Our results reflect not martial disharmony, but the sexual monotony that is a social fact of the nature of long-term monogamous relationships. The most predictable thing about a relationship is that, the longer it progresses, the quality and the frequency of sex between the couple will fade. This is because we get used to and bored of the same body.”

While popular culture suggests that men cheat because “they are horny and women cheat because there is something wrong with the emotional aspect of their relationship, our findings challenge these perceptions,” Anderson said. “Our research suggests that men and women are not as different from each other as some may think.”

One way women seeking affairs may differ from men looking to cheat, however, is in their preferred number of partners, Anderson said. While only 47 percent of women involved in the study discussed the number of partners they were seeking, of those that did, they all wanted an affair exclusively with one man. On the other hand, Anderson’s previous research indicates that men seeking affairs are not looking for a single partner.

Anderson said this distinction between men and women seeking affairs may be in part due to the “stud/slut dichotomy” that is so prominent in our society, which can reward men for having multiple sex partners but stigmatizes women. “One way of telling themselves that they are not ‘sluts’ is to say that they are desiring monogamy with their infidelity, and that monogamy must have passion,” according to Anderson, who said another reason why women might seek monogamy within their infidelity is that some women need to be emotionally connected to a lover in order to have fulfilling sex.

Citing high rates of cheating, divorce, and premarital sex, Anderson said, “It is very clear that our model of having sex and love with just one other person for life has failed — and it has failed massively. Hopefully, this study will help unravel the stranglehold that our culture has on sex and love — showing that just because one cheats, it does not mean that one has failed to love his or her partner.”

Study Reveals Sex Differences in Experiencing Orgasms

Among single adults in the U.S., women, regardless of sexual orientation, have less predictable, more varied orgasm experiences than do men, new research indicates. The study revealed that men experience orgasm during sexual activity with a familiar partner 85% of the time on average, compared with 63% of the time for women.

The Journal of Sexual Medicine study also found that for women, but not men, the likelihood of orgasm varies with sexual orientation, with lesbian women having a significantly higher probability of orgasm than either heterosexual or bisexual women (75%, 62%, and 58%, respectively).

Study identifies 'bonus effect' for certain multiracial daters

While previous research has documented the existence of a racial hierarchy within the dating world with white women and men on top, a new study finds that in certain circumstances multiracial daters are actually seen as more desirable than individuals from all other racial groups, including whites.

"The most interesting and surprising finding from our study is that some white-minority multiracial daters are, in fact, preferred over white and non-white daters," said Celeste Vaughan Curington, a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and lead author of the study, which she will present at the 109th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. "We call this the multiracial 'bonus effect,' and this is truly unheard of in the existing sociological literature."

The researchers found that three multiracial groups were on the receiving end of the "bonus effect." Asian-white women were viewed more favorably than all other groups by white and Asian men, while Asian-white and Hispanic-white men were also afforded "bonus" status by Asian and Hispanic women respectively.

"Although it may be tempting to try to fit multiracial people into a single position in the existing racial hierarchy of desirability, the 'bonus effect' demonstrates that this is probably not possible," Curington said.

The study relies on 2003-2010 data from one of the largest dating websites in the United States, and focuses on initial messages sent between heterosexual women and men among the following seven groups: Asian, black, Hispanic, white, Asian-white, black-white, and Hispanic-white. Curington and her co-authors Ken-Hou Lin, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, and Jennifer Hickes Lundquist, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, analyzed nearly 6.7 million initial messages.

"While scholarly conversation on multiraciality in America has long been dominated by the concept of the 'one drop rule,' meaning that white-minority multiracial people are viewed the same as minorities, our study finds no support for this theory," Curington said.

Rather, overall, the researchers found that white-minority multiracial daters (e.g., black-white daters) are viewed more favorably than their monoracial minority counterparts (e.g., black daters). "We find that 'honorary whiteness,' in the form of what we call 'white equivalence' and 'multiracial inbetweenness,' seems to be the most frequent way that both white men and women and some minority groups generally categorize white-minority multiracial people," Curington said.

"A preference for multiraciality is closely akin to a preference for lightness or whiteness," Curington explained. "Daters may be influenced by the popular media's representation of mixed-race people as 'exotic' and sexually appealing."

In terms of the study's implications, Curington said, "The findings provide us with a better understanding of the social meaning of multiraciality in the post-civil rights era United States, and of how demographic changes in racial identification operate at the level of everyday interactions."

Virginity pledges for men can lead to sexual confusion -- even after the wedding day

Bragging of sexual conquests, suggestive jokes and innuendo, and sexual one-upmanship can all be a part of demonstrating one's manhood, especially for young men eager to exert their masculinity.

But how does masculinity manifest itself among young men who have pledged sexual abstinence before marriage? How do they handle sexual temptation, and what sorts of challenges crop up once they're married?

"Sexual purity and pledging abstinence are most commonly thought of as feminine, something girls and young women promise before marriage," said Sarah Diefendorf, a sociology graduate student at the University of Washington. "But I wanted to look at this from the men's point of view."

Studying a group of 15 young evangelical Christian men, Diefendorf learned that support groups and open discussions about sex with trusted companions were key in helping the men during their pre-marital years. But once married, they faced trouble. Instructed by the church to keep problems "in the dark" after marriage, the men reported feeling like they couldn't discuss sex with their friends and didn't know how to comfortably broach the subject with their wives. The newly wedded men also expressed surprise that sexual temptations continued to taunt them.

Diefendorf will present her findings Aug. 17 2014 at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco.

At the start of her study, in 2008, the men were in their late teens and early 20s and part of a support group for young men who had pledged to remain virgins until marriage. The group was affiliated with a nondenominational evangelical megachurch in the southwest United States that had about 14,000 attendees at Sunday services.

Over the course of a year, Diefendorf attended their meetings, and conducted one-on-one interviews and focus-group meetings with the men.

The men talked about sex as both "sacred" – a gift from God meant for the marriage bed – and "beastly" if it occurs outside of marriage.

"To maintain this gift from God, they believe that they must control sex before marriage," Diefendorf said. The support group is one way for the young men to explore their sexual urges, she said. Many of them opened up to struggles with pornography and masturbation, which some considered as "destructive" and a threat to their commitment to abstinence.

"People think that evangelical support groups are just about suppressing men's natural urges, but really they are caring, supportive and safe space that allow men to have a remarkably open and frank discussion about sexual desire," Diefendorf said.

Besides the support group, the men sought out accountability partners to help control their behavior. One of them, for instance, had an accountability partner who would text-message him each night, "Are you behaving?" Some of them used software to track which websites they visited, and shared the results with the partner.

A few years later, in 2011 and 2012, Diefendorf followed up with the men. Fourteen of them were married and she wanted to find out how the men's views of sex and masculinity had changed since marriage.

During a focus-group meeting in one of their homes, it soon became clear that as taboo as sexual activity was before marriage, it was now taboo to talk about sex as it was seen as disrespecting their wives.

"After marriage, the church culture assumes that couples become each other's support, regardless of the issue at hand," Diefendorf said. "There's little support in figuring out sexuality in married life, and these men don't know how to talk to their wives about it."

As one of the men put it: "For me to come home from work and say, 'hey, did you like it last time?' I mean that would be – that would be such a weird question for me to ask."

The newlyweds also revealed they continue to think of sex in terms of control, and how the so-called beastly elements of sex – temptations by pornography and extramarital affairs – do not disappear with the transition to married life.