Study reveals many women have sex without desire to preserve relationships
Researchers found that women who lack sexual desire often engage in intercourse to keep their partners faithful, a behavior they label “mercy sex.”
A recent article in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy examined baseline results from ten years of clinical trials for treatments of hypoactive sexual desire disorder, including a testosterone patch, bremelanotide injections and the FDA-approved drug flibanserin. Researchers Nikita Guptan and James A. Simon of IntimMedicine Specialists in Washington, D.C., observed that women in the studies reported having sex roughly two to three times each month even though they experienced little or no sexual drive.
They coined the term “mercy sex” for this pattern, arguing that many women engage in intercourse to promote monogamy and prevent their partners from pursuing other mates, a strategy aligned with evolutionary theories of female preference for stable, resource-providing partners. The authors note that this rationale does not extend to women in same-sex relationships or those without a partner, and that repeatedly suppressing desire may contribute to depressive feelings. They recommend that future drug trials assess sexual quality alongside frequency when measuring outcomes.
Why it matters
Understanding “mercy sex” highlights how relationship dynamics can affect mental health and informs how sexual-desire treatments are evaluated.
In this story
