Honesty in the bedroom can be a difficult topic for couples. Women may tend to tread lightly when trying to communicate with their partners about trouble in their sexual relationship. Giving sexual feedback to men can be a precarious situation, especially when dealing with masculinity. Researchers wanted to examine the effects of perceived fragile masculinity and perceived gender roles on honesty in the bedroom.
A pilot study took 132 women in sexual relationships with men and asked them about their demographics, their reported rates of sexual feedback, and gender role attitudes. The researchers found that women who reported making more money than their male partners, faked orgasms at twice the rate of women who made less. However, researchers didn’t find a correlation between gender attitudes and faking orgasms.
The researchers wanted to further investigate if women’s concerns about their partner’s perceived masculinity was related to the lying about orgasms and not giving sexual feedback. 276 women who had sexual relations with men in the last 6 months were asked about, most importantly, their perceptions of their partner’s masculinity.
The results showed that women who perceived their partner of having a “precarious manhood” would not communicate their sexual needs as much and were more likely to fake orgasms. These results were partially affected by communication anxiety. In a follow-up study, participants were asked to imagine how they would talk to a man with a fragile ego about sexual problems. They too also reported less honest sexual communication.
One of the questions researchers would like to look into next is, how accurate are women’s perceptions of their male partner’s masculinity and if women’s ideas about male masculinity incorrect. They also want to look into this phenomenon with non-heterosexual couples.
Original Article: https://www.psypost.org/2022/05/women-withhold-honest-sexual-communication-to-protect-their-partners-perceived-masculinity-study-finds-63193
Study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/19485506211067884
