Sexuality

Breaking: Middle-aged women like sex

A new study sets out to prove something we already knew, but is there more to the story than what science explains?

BY RYAN BROWN

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Today in "hey, didn't we already know that?" is a recent study out of the University of Texas showing that women hit a sexual peak in middle age. But the reason might surprise you. According to the researchers, what's ramping up the libidos of women in their 30s and 40s is their declining fertility. Women of a certain age, says study author David Buss, have a psychological urge to "facilitate conception before the window of opportunity closes."

Buss and his team of psychologists surveyed over 800 women and found that women ages 27 to 45 were more likely than either their highly fertile younger sisters (ages 18 to 26) or the menopausal set (over 46) to "have frequent sexual fantasies," "think about sexual activity," or display "a willingness to have casual sex." And from an evolutionary biology standpoint, the researchers argue, that makes sense -- in order to propagate the species, women with declining fertility recognize, consciously or otherwise, that if they want to have children, well, they'd better snap to it. In other words, when your biological clock says jump, you better, uh, run off and have lots of sex.