PsyPost        Search...

Home  Exclusive  Relationships and Sexual Health

Women withhold honest sexual

communication to protect their partner’s
perceived masculinity, study finds
by Eric W. Dolan — May 22, 2022 in Relationships and Sexual Health, Social Psychology

NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP

Enter your email address here

SIGN UP

S TAY C O N N E C T E D

     

[Subscribe to PsyPost on YouTube to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in

psychology and neuroscience]
TRENDING

Women who are concerned about threatening their male partner’s

  Psychopathic tendencies are
masculinity are more likely to fake orgasms and less likely to
associated with an elevated interest in
communicate honestly about their sexual needs, according to new fire, study finds

research published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality
Science. The findings shed new light on how relationships can be  New psychology research rebuts

Sigmund Freud’s “wrecked by
impacted by precarious manhood — the belief that one’s status as a “real
success” hypothesis
 man” is hard to attain but easily lost.
 Web-based exercise intervention leads
 “I’ve always been interested in gender roles, and specifically the ways that to mental health improvements in 3
heterosexual men and women interact romantically and sexually,” said months, according to controlled trial
 study author Jessica Jordan, an incoming assistant teaching professor at
 Attractive female students no longer
the University of Tampa. “As a young woman, I received a lot of
earned higher grades when classes
 information – from friends, older women, the media – about how to moved online during COVID-19
‘handle’ men, and a piece of advice I commonly heard was to do your best
 to protect men’s sense of masculinity.”  Study links identity threat among white
evangelicals to the belief Trump’s
election was part of God’s plan

 New psychology research reveals

men’s motives for sending unsolicited
dick pics
“When my mentor and co-author invited me to work on a project
investigating if men are less likely to ask for sexual feedback from women
when they feel their masculinity is threatened (which I suspect is true), I
immediately thought to myself, ‘It doesn’t matter, women won’t give an
insecure man any kind of critical feedback.’

“Of course, that was a generalization, but when I spoke to other women
about it they unanimously agreed they understood the urge to withhold
feedback to protect their partner’s masculinity,” Jordan explained. “I felt
like representing this extremely common experience in research was
important, because it’s the first step to helping women (and men!) break
out of that pattern.”

An initial study of 132 women in sexual relationships with men found that
women who earned more money than their male partners reported faking
orgasms at twice the frequency of women who made less than their
partners. But the researchers found no evidence that the gender role
attitudes of the participants or their partners were related to faking
orgasms, ruling out an alternative explanation for the findings.

To more directly examine whether women’s concerns about their partner’s

masculinity were related to deceptive sexual communication, Jordan and
her colleagues conducted a second study of 276 women who reported
having sex with a man in the last 6 months. They found that women who
perceived their partner as high in precarious manhood were less likely to
communicate their sexual needs and more likely to fake orgasms, and this
association was partially mediated by communication anxiety.

In other words, women who perceived that their male sexual partner did
things just to show he was “a real man” were more likely to agree with RECENT

statements such as “It worries me that giving my partner sexual feedback

might hurt his feelings.” Women who expressed greater communication  Psychopathic tendencies are
associated with an elevated interest in
anxiety, in turn, were less likely to tell their partner what felt good during
fire, study finds
sex and reported that communicating with their partner was more difficult.
 Web-based exercise intervention leads
to mental health improvements in 3
months, according to controlled trial

 When texts suddenly stop: Study

In an additional study, which included a sample of 196 women, the investigates why people “ghost” — and
researchers found that participants who were asked to imagine a male it’s consequences

partner whose manhood was fragile were also less likely to provide honest
 Adolescents with eating disorders
sexual communication. report exposure to “pro-Ana” materials
on TikTok without searching for it
“The studies demonstrated that women undergo this chain reaction of
perceiving a male partner as insecure in his masculinity, experiencing  Greater fusion with gaming culture
predicts heightened narcissism,
anxiety, and subsequently withholding communication, which ultimately
psychopathy, hostile sexism, and
predicted poorer sexual satisfaction,” Jordan told PsyPost. “What that tells racism
me is that there are breaks during the pattern through which we can
intervene. If you notice you’re feeling anxious about your partner’s
response to something, carefully examine why you might think that and
invite your partner to be a part of that conversation.”
 The researchers believe that future studies should explore this
phenomenon within couples to better gauge the impact of men’s
precarious manhood.

“There are lots of follow up questions,” Jordan said. “However, the really
big question left to be addressed, in my mind, is how accurate are women
in their perceptions of their male partners? Are they guessing correctly
that their partner would not respond well to negative feedback or even
learning they (the women) had not had an orgasm? Or are women making
incorrect assumptions, based on the messaging they receive about men in
general?”

“Following that big question, though, is the need to explore this

phenomenon within non-heterosexual and non-cisgender couples,” she
added. “I’m interested in exploring how far precarious manhood reaches
into individuals and couples who already break or bend gender norms.”

The study, “Do Women Withhold Honest Sexual Communication When

They Believe Their Partner’s Manhood is Threatened?“, was authored by
Jessica A. Jordan, Joseph A. Vandello, Martin Heesacker, and Dylan M.
Larson-Konar.

 Share  Tweet  Send  Scan  Share  Share  Pin

 Send

Cognitive Science About

COVID-19
PsyPost is a psychology and neuroscience
Mental Health
news website dedicated to reporting the
Social Psychology
latest research on human behavior,
Drug Research
cognition, and society. (READ MORE...)
Conspiracy Theories
Meditation
Psychology of Religion
Aviation Psychology and Human Factors
Relationships and Sexual Health
Evolutionary Psychology
Neuroimaging
Psychedelic Drugs
Dark Triad
Political Psychology

       Contact us / Privacy policy