Magnificent Sex is a book about the authors’ study of people with good sex lives: sex that is “great”, “remarkable”, “wonderful”, or “memorable.”
By far the most interesting aspect of the book is the inclusion criteria for the study. They studied two groups: people over 60 who had been married for over 25 years; and queer, kinky, and/or poly people. In the authors' clinical experience, these two groups were most likely to have fantastic sex lives.
Once anonymized (removing mentions of tells like age and gender), the interview transcripts for the two study groups were indistinguishable. From the description of their sex lives alone, the people coding the study couldn’t tell whether someone was a seventysomething, monogamously married heterosexual man or a twentysomething queer poly enby. They were doing the same stuff.
The people coding the study could, however, tell both groups apart from the sex therapists whom the authors were also interviewing (because sex therapists presumably had reflected on what a good sex life is like). Sex therapists tended to have opinions like, well:
A male sex therapist believed that it was absolutely crucial for women to feel desired but that it was not as important for men. “I think women are much more turned on and satisfied by their partner’s volcano-like desire than the man is. The man is more likely to be turned off by that."
Mysteriously, the people actually having great sex tended not to agree.
Unfortunately, the authors didn’t find out much interesting about great sex. The entire book is from the “well, that’s obvious, but I’m glad someone checked” school of psychology. Good for its likelihood of replicating, bad for the reader—especially since one paper’s worth of information is draaaaagged out for a 180-page book.
So what did we learn about people who have great sex?
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