Love boosts sexual satisfaction for women

A new study has claimed that 'love' can make sex more fulfilling for many women.

According to a Penn State Abington sociologist, Beth Montemurro, 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, and that they felt less inhibited and more willing to explore their sexuality with the person they loved.

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 the connection between love, sex and marriage remained important throughout their lifetimes, not just in certain eras of their lives.

Montemurro said that the connection between love and sex may show how women were socialized to see sex as an expression of love. Despite decades of the women's rights movement and an increased awareness of women's sexual desire, the media continued 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.

In a similar way, the media often portrayed marriage as largely sexless, even though the participants in the study said that sex was an important part of their marriage, she added.

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.

The study was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.