Do men prefer sex more than women?

[slowmove]

General question I am interested in. Why is sex more important to men than it is to women?

Personally I don’t think this is really true,
It’s probably true to say that men are generally happier to have casual sex whereas I think females less so.
But within a relationship I think sex is just as important for females (if not more so, but I think that a lot of females would not readily admit to this), but for different reasons.
Just look at the number of threads on sexless marriages / relationships and how that makes some women feel.

Not so here; it’s definitely more important to me than it is to my DH. It’s picked up pace lately, but generally it’s more me wanting to have sex than it is him.

I wish that was the case in my Rship . Dp would go without it , he hasn’t got a sex drive . We have a lot of problems in our Rship due to this . I often feel rejected and no longer come onto him so we rarely have it . It’s really important to me and I think I will be ending the relationship shortly .

Speaking for myself and friends IRL, it's just as important to a lot of women and less important to some men.

I’m female and sex is very important to me. I’ve also had my fair share of casual sex in the past too.

I feel that the myth that women find sex less important than men do, want it less, or enjoy it less is just that - a myth. It is probably a result of all that social conditioning for generations that nice girls were not supposed to enjoy sex. Thank goodness that modern contraception methods and society's mores are finally allowing women to be honest about finding sex a pleasure and not a chore to be endured.

There have been times when it's been less important for me. At the moment it's an absolute dealbreaker. I can't imagine staying exclusive in a sexless relationship now. Thank goodness at the moment I don't have to, I'm in a relationship of a few months and it's in that rabbit phase. I do wonder when I finally stop being perimenopausal whether I will lose interest.

For me it has changed throughout life. Interesting that as my Dh desires have declined mine have increased

It's easier for women to get casual sex than men so men appear more desperate for it and appear to want it more.

@slowmove

Why do people start threads and then vanish?

I haven't disappeared @VeniVidiWeeWee

@Myotherusernamewastakenagain why is it easier for women to get casual sex?

Maybe...

Doesn't it depend on health, relationship status and even what sort of sex you're talking about?

I think it's true younger men, on average, want sex more than younger women. There's plenty of research that men's sex drive peaks in the late teens / early 20s whereas women's doesn't peak until their 30s, and in the earlier years men are definitely more insistent.

I think it's true that men are more willing to have sex outside a relationship. There is research saying that men are more likely than women to cheat because they want sex. And also the obvious one - prostitution is overwhelmingly women selling sex to men. Women rarely need to buy sex from men. But it doesn't follow that women don't want sex outside a relationship, only that they're less likely to seek it. That might be for all sorts of reasons.

Here's another one. Here's an American survey. Men masturbate much, much more than women. fivethirtyeight.com/features/dear-mona-i-masturbate-more-than-once-a-day-am-i-normal/. It is a slightly old survey, but it says that a full 36% of 18-24 yo women don't masturbate. For women in the 30s that figure rises despite that being a woman's sexual peak. On the one hand (or should that be 'off the one wrist') it suggests that men just like wanking more than women. On the other hand, it suggests a stronger underlying sexual desire at all stages of life. While it's true that, historically, women's sexuality has been shamed, that's also been true for men's sexuality too, especially re masturbation, if not to the same extent.

Next: Mumsnet. Off the sex board, particularly on AIBU, there are a lot of ick responses to anything to do with sex. It's true that more women on MN are complaining about their partners' lack of sex drives but that just reflects MN's demographics.

Finally, a controversial point and it relates to the orgasm gap. Heterosexual men have more of them during sex than heterosexual women, and gay men have more orgasms than gay women. It's easier to orgasm when you actually want sex and men don't generally talk about someone else 'giving' them an orgasm - they just have them.

Why is it easier for women to get casual sex? Because I do think the itch for sexual relief is stronger most of the time for a bigger proportion of men. I think men would rather have passionate loving intimacy, but if they can't get that for whatever reason, they are happy just to have sex. The social side matters too - much less physical risk, less disapproved of, brought up in a porn soaked environment catering for them - but I do think the drive to just get off is stronger in a bigger proportion of men.

It can be genuinely overwhelming the first time you go on a hookup site as a woman. Men almost literally pouring into your mentions. Having felt unsexual in real life for a long time it was extraordinary.

[quote slowmove]@Myotherusernamewastakenagain why is it easier for women to get casual sex? [/quote]
A lot of men will shag anything with a pulse, women have higher standards overall.

@Myotherusernamewastakenagain - I don’t think that’s always true, I think there has to be a certain amount of attraction.

@Catullus5 - I think it’s pretty sad when women on Mumsnet say they’d rather drink tea than shag their husbands. I also think women are as capable of having affairs, women just talk about it less. I think for a women, it’s generally a case of not feeling desired by their partners, or not having their emotional needs met.
For men, affairs are purely sex.

Oh it's not always true. It was a generalisation based on my experiences.

I have always had a higher sex drive than DH, but sex is very important to both of us.

What this has meant for us is that I have done most of the initiating in our 20 year marriage, but neither of us mind that.
We both value self love and mutual masterbation as well.

I do have friends who are not so interested in sex, but I just couldn't live like that, personally.

I don’t think for one minute that sex is more important to men than women.

There are others factors to take into account though. Significantly unwanted pregnancy. In addition society’s attitude to “nice girls” and name calling; l have even been told on MN that they had names for girls like me when they were at school!

In addition, sometimes, total male misunderstanding about how a woman “works”. Add to that, the fact that the clitoris does not have a signpost.

For ages I always thought DH wanted sex more than me, in our 20's and early 30's it didn't feel balanced and it did feel that it was more important to him than me. However now he's in his 40's and I'm not far off, his desire has slowed down pace a little and i feel a lot more interested, but also I realise that without enough of it, I start to lose my connection to him a little bit. It's really one of the few things we have which just belongs to us as we bring up small children. So I think that with age, I have grown into sex being very important to me as a woman. I think it depends on the individual and their needs rather than if it's more important to a man or a woman.

I think there’s lots of factors that affect the baseline stats:
Fear of pregnancy, societal disapproval, being the passive one in dating - women had pressure not to show/express sexual desire so the idea they weren’t as interested grew.
Also, sex for men, on the whole, is ‘successful’ in that they come nearly every time. I think women are often not interested in mediocre sex, not sex itself.
There is also the menopause and that can really affect sex drive. Personally mine went into overdrive but my best friend totally lost all interest, the switchback of hormones and symptoms doesn’t make any of us feel our sexiest does it?
Children, the physical impact of childbirth, the care load tends to be on mum at least in the early years, the whole ‘Madonna/whore’ can make people see themselves/their partners differently.

The answers already posted cover it - OP's question isn't really precise enough to answer properly.

As already covered there are plenty of sensible reasons to argue that men's 'drive' is higher, since e.g. men have a far higher appetite for
wanking/use of prostitues/pornography/new casual partners who they don't particularly like/don't particulalry see as long-term relationship/aren't even especially attracted to. In terms of new partners, society tends to look more favourably on men who rack up large numbers than women who do the same [although causation here is debatable, since men with characteristics (in terms of looks, wealth, etc) that society values highly will always find it easier to rack up multiple partners]. Also, in pure physical terms men physically get more out of PIV intercourse - they don't need to be 'warmed up' for it, it's e.g. never/rarely painful, pretty much always leads to a 'happy ending', etc.

But then there are a [smaller] number of factors which go the other way - most notably, men are [on average] far less likely to view quantity or [especially] quality of physical intimacy within a relationship as any kind of barometer of its viability or the relationship or of their overall feelings of self-worth etc.

Something that's just different is how drive varies over time: men's physical ardour has already started to drop off even by the age of 20, whereas women's typically has at least another decade or two to go at the same or often higher levels - but then women's can [sometimes] drop off a cliff once a certain age is reached, whereas men's will generally sputter along at a lowish but nonzero level until well into old age. Also, women's drive is subject to far more short-term variations driven by both internal [hormonal] and external [general happiness, health, etc] factors.

As a man, who works with lots of men, this is probably the number one gripe I hear.

This idea is supported by the fact there are a lot more sex workers serving men than woman suggesting there is a demand not being met in other ways.

It's possible that men probably wouldn't complain to other men if their partner had a higher sex drive.

IMHO, sex is equally important to both (all?) genders. It's just that everyone's libido is different, and it comes and goes as we get older.

Menopause, and perimenopause can have a massive effect on a woman's libido, for better or worse, but a man's libido won't (necessarily) change other than from a general slowing down with age.

Why is it easier for women to have casual sex than men? Because there are (say) 1000 men to every woman looking for casual sex... A woman just has to smile at a guy for something to kick off...

I think men are generally more sexual than women, saying that, I’m a female and I have always enjoyed sex and do have a relatively high sex drive but generally speaking I think men have a bigger appetite for sex than women.