Why Have Sex? Study Finds 237 Reasons

After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations.

It's more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart.

College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex — they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and "it feels good," according to a peer-reviewed study in the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women.

Expressing love and showing affection were in the top 10 for both men and women, but they did take a back seat to the clear No. 1: "I was attracted to the person."

Researchers at the University of Texas spent five years and their own money to study the overlooked why behind sex while others were spending their time on the how.

"It's refuted a lot of gender stereotypes ... that men only want sex for the physical pleasure and women want love," said University of Texas clinical psychology professor Cindy Meston, the study's co-author. "That's not what I came up with in my findings."

"The number of ways people can use sex as manipulation and revenge and getting back at somebody and tricking somebody and deceiving somebody — that was pretty surprising," Meston told CBS News.

Forget thinking that men are from Mars and women from Venus, "the more we look, the more we find similarity," said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. Goldstein, who wasn't part of Meston's study, said the Texas research made a lot of sense and adds to growing evidence that the vaunted differences in the genders may only be among people with sexual problems.

Meston and colleague David Buss first questioned 444 men and women — ranging in age from 17 to 52 — to come up with a list of 237 distinct reasons people have sex. They ranged from "It's fun" which men ranked fourth and women ranked eighth to "I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease" which ranked on the bottom by women.

The latter "wasn't endorsed with high frequency, but nevertheless this is a pretty serious reason with a whole lot of negative social consequences," Meston told CBS News.

Once they came up with that long list, Meston and Buss asked 1,549 college students taking psychology classes to rank the reasons on a one-to-five scale on how they applied to their experiences.

"None of the gender differences are all that great," Meston said. "Men were more likely to be opportunistic towards having sex, so if sex were there and available they would jump on it, somewhat more so than women. Women were more likely to have sex because they felt they needed to please their partner."

But this is among college students, when Meston conceded "hormones run rampant." She predicted huge differences when older groups of people are studied.

Since her study came out Tuesday, people are coming up with new reasons to have sex.

"Originally, I thought that we exhaustively compiled the list, but now I found that there should be some added," Meston said.

Top 10 Reasons To Have Sex For Men

• I was attracted to the person.
  
• It feels good.
  
• I wanted to experience physical pleasure.
  
• It's fun.
  
• I wanted to show my affection to the person.
  
• I was sexually aroused and wanted the release.
  
• I was "horny."
  
• I wanted to express my love for the person.
  
• I wanted to achieve an orgasm.
  
• I wanted to please my partner.

• I was attracted to the person.
  
• I wanted to experience physical pleasure.
  
• It feels good.
  
• I wanted to show my affection to the person.
  
• I wanted to express my love for the person.
  
• I was sexually aroused and wanted the release.
  
• I was "horny."
  
• It's fun.
  
• I realized I was in love.
  
• I was "in the heat of the moment."

• The person offered to give me drugs for doing it.
  
• I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease.
  
• I wanted to punish myself.
  
• I wanted to break up my relationship.
  
• I wanted to get a job.

• I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease.
  
• Someone offered me money to do it.
  
• I wanted to get a raise.
  
• It was an initiation rite to a club or organization.
  
• I wanted to get a job.