Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivation from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between) - Softcover

"The most thorough taxonomy of sexual motivation ever compiled" (John Tierney New York Times)

"A fascinating and often extraordinary exploration of the psychology and biology of sexual behaviour" (Daily Express)

"A readable, brutal analysis of how your brain chooses partners for you" (Evening Standard)

"Why Women Have Sex is a fascinating tour of what psychology and biology can tell us about women's sexual motivation. Meston and Buss are first-rate scientists and skilled writers who actually answer the question that everyone was afraid to ask" (Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness)

"Why Women Have Sex is an endlessly well informed and irresistibly readable book...the most fascinating and illuminating look at female sexuality since Kinsey's Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female" (Mary Roach, author of Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex)

Why do women have sex? Is it purely for pleasure or the desire to reproduce?

In their ground-breaking book, clinical psychologist Cindy Meston and evolutionary psychologist David Buss investigate the underlying sexual desires of women and identify 237 distinct motivations for sex. Drawing on more than a thousand intensive interviews conducted solely for the book, as well as their pioneering research on physiological response and evolutionary emotions, Meston and Buss give us a remarkably complex and nuanced portrait of female sexuality.

They explore the use of sex as a defensive tactic against a man's infidelity (protection), as a ploy to boost self-confidence (status), as a barter for gifts (resource acquisition), or even as a cure for a headache (medication).

Why Women Have Sex explores the deep-seated psychology and biology of female sexuality, and promises to inform every woman's - and her partner's - awareness of her relationship to sex and her own sexuality.