A new study revealed that "manly" men consider their partner's orgasm as their own achievement, boosting their own ego and undermining their partner's "big moment".
The study, published in the Journal of Sex Research, showed that women's orgasm is oftentimes viewed by men as a masculinity achievement. Due to this, men tend to measure their "manliness" based on their performance in bed and their partner's satisfaction.
"Men who have sex with women clearly have a stake in women's orgasms. But, some of the ways that heterosexuality are playing out seem to be that, for some men, their interest in women's orgasms is not really about women's pleasure," said study authors Sara B. Chadwick and Sari van Anders of the University of Michigan, in an interview with PsyPost. "Instead, for these men, women's orgasm is actually about the men feeling good about their masculinity."
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For the study, the researchers recruited 810 men through an introductory psychology participant pool and the community. The participants were asked to read a vignette about a sexual encounter they have with an attractive woman in which she either has an orgasm or not. The researchers then asked the participants to rate their sexual self-esteem and how masculine they felt after knowing if the woman reached orgasm or not.
The researchers found that men reported higher sexual self-esteem and felt more "manly" when they imagine the woman reaching orgasm during their sexual encounters. This suggests that men who were concerned about their masculinity often feel better about themselves if their sexual partners experience orgasm, making women's orgasm as some kind of an ego boosts.
With their findings, the researchers noted that it might be the reason why some men felt pressured to make their partner reach orgasm. Additionally, the study could explain why some women tend to fake their orgasm just to protect their partner's inflated ego.
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