BUSTED! 6 Gender Myths in the Bedroom & Beyond

The cliché that men think about sex every seven seconds is not true. And while it's true that men think about sex more often than women do, they also think about other bodily needs, such as food and sleep, more than women do.



6) Men Think About Sex More Than Women Do. In a study published in 2011 in the Journal of Sex Research, psychologists asked research participants to record their thoughts throughout the day. They found that men pondered sex 18 times a day to a woman's 10 times a day, but men also thought about food and sleep proportionately more than women. That suggests sex doesn't hold as vaunted a position for men as you might expect.

5) Men Want More Sex Partners Than Women If you ask a lot of men and women how many sex partners they'd want in a given period of time, the numbers provided by men average higher than the women's numbers. But it seems that a few randy fellows at the top are skewing the results as a whole.

4) Men Want 'Sexy' & Women Want 'Status'. An underpinning of evolutionary psychology is that men look for sexy women who are likely to provide them with attractive, healthy offspring, while women are more concerned than men about getting a high-status mate who can be a good provider.

3) Women Have Far Fewer Orgasms Than Men Do Are women biologically doomed to a life of less sexual pleasure than men? Studies suggest that men do experience more orgasms than women, but Conley and her colleagues add a large caveat: The differences are largest in one-night stands and hookup relationships. Things look rosier for women in long-term relationships.

2) Men Like Casual Sex More Than Women Do. For a 1989 study, researchers trained young men and women to approach opposite-sex individuals of a similar age and proposition them. In a striking contrast, 70 percent of the men approached by a woman seeking sex said, "Sure." Not a single woman agreed.

1) Women Are Pickier Than Men. Evolutionary theory holds that men want to spread their seed, while women are choosy about whom they mate with. But this may not be universal, according to Conley and her colleagues.

Because guys are traditionally the ones who make the first move, women may simply get more of a chance to be choosy. Perhaps, Conley and her colleagues wrote, women's pickiness is tied more to dating rules than to innate desires.