Men Masturbate to Make Up the Difference—But Women Don't
“Two main theories have been promoted about the relationship between masturbation and partnered sex . The complementary theory proposes that people masturbate within a relationship in order to enhance their partnered sex. So, masturbation might increase and improve the partnered sex. In contrast, the compensatory model suggests that people in relationships masturbate as a means to substitute for sexual desires (whether in quantity, quality or type) that go unmet within the relationship.” What was unique about the Regnerus, Price & Gordon (2017) study that he writes about is that they added the variable of how content participants were with their sexual frequency, rather than simply how often they had sex. If you’re having sex twice a week and are happy about it, you may have less of a desire for masturbation than if you would like to have sex four times a week. Seems like a pretty important variable to add, right? The studies that didn’t consider satisfaction with s...
