Why College Women and Men Refrain from Sex Despite Desire: Development of the No Sex Despite Desire (NSDD) Measure

ABSTRACT

Humans have sex for myriad reasons, many unrelated to desire. But under what conditions does sexual desire not lead to sex? We investigated reasons college students refrain from sex despite desire and having an attractive, willing partner and relationships between these reasons and other aspects of sexuality and personality. For item generation, 604 participants identified 109 reasons why individuals may refrain from sex despite desire. For construct validation, 712 participants reported the frequency they experienced these reasons on a novel measure. Every reason evidencing discernible gender differences was endorsed more by women. These items largely concentrated in factors of Personal Insecurities and Principled Concerns. No gender differences emerged on the Partner Issues factor. Factors differentially related to sexuality and personality variables. Principled Concerns related negatively to sociosexual behavior and attitudes and positively to sexual traditionalism across genders. Partner Issues positively correlated with sociosexual behavior and desire for women. Personal Insecurities negatively correlated with sociosexual attitudes for men. Principled Concerns related to sexual functioning issues for women. Personal Insecurities and Principled Concerns related to worse sexual functioning for men. Personal Insecurities related to Neuroticism across genders. These results suggest potential directions for therapeutic interventions and further research.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the contributions of Dr Marta Meana for her insights and mentorship with this study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availability Statement

Data are available at https://osf.io/e96ag/. The No Sex Despite Desire measure is available at https://osf.io/t7jvx/.

Code Availability

Analytic code is available at https://osf.io/e96ag/.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2024.2368695.