A study conducted in Poland of women in committed, sexually active relationships found that women who perceived themselves as having lower mate value than their partners showed a stronger desire to sexually satisfy their partners. This higher motivation, in turn, was associated with these women initiating sex more often, performing fellatio, and faking orgasms. The paper is Archives of sexual behavior.
Having a stable romantic relationship is beneficial for both men and women. Stable romantic relationships provide emotional security, shared resources, mutual protection, and a trusting environment for raising children. From an evolutionary perspective, long-term bonds may have benefited men by increasing their confidence in fatherhood and women by providing support during pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare. Collaborative parenting can improve child survival and development by distributing demands for protection, care, and resource provision between partners.
Nevertheless, maintaining long-term relationships can be difficult, as people must balance their commitment to their partner with the attraction of possible alternatives. To reduce the risk of infidelity and separation, people adopt mate retention strategies aimed at maintaining a committed relationship with their partner.
Benefit-giving strategies strengthen relationships by providing love, emotional support, resources, attention, or sexual gratification. Compensatory strategies instead seek to prevent defection through jealousy, surveillance, criticism, possessiveness, or limiting a partner’s behavior.
These efforts may be stronger if people believe that their partner is more valuable as a spouse than they are, as such discrepancies can generate anxiety and fear of abandonment. Mate value refers to how desirable a person is perceived to be as a romantic or sexual partner based on characteristics such as attractiveness, health, personality, status, resources, and relationship quality.
In a new study, Natalia Frankowska, an assistant professor at SWPS University in Poland and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at UCLA, and her colleagues investigated whether heterosexual women who are perceived to have lower mate value than their male partners initiate sex, engage in oral sex, and fake orgasm more often.
“This study is a continuation of previous research on men’s sexual behavior in committed heterosexual relationships,” Frankowska told SciPost. “Oral sex is interesting from an evolutionary perspective because oral sex is commonly practiced, even though it does not directly contribute to conception. This suggests that oral sex may serve important social, sexual, or relational functions.”
Previous research suggests that oral sex may function as a mate-retention behavior that helps maintain a partner’s interest and involvement. In a previous study, Frankowska and colleagues found that men who perceived their female partners to be more valuable than themselves as mates were more motivated to satisfy themselves sexually and, as a result, engaged in cunnilingus more frequently.
“We then wanted to test whether a similar mechanism was also observed among women,” Frankowska explained. “More specifically, we were interested in what happens when people perceive their partner to be more desirable than themselves, what psychologists call spousal value discrepancy. Such perceptions are subjective and can change over time, but they can shape how people think and behave within committed relationships.”
The researchers hypothesized that the greater the difference in mate value favoring the male partner, the greater the woman’s motivation to sexually please the man as a mate retention strategy. This leads to more frequent attempts to initiate sex, blowjobs, and fake orgasms.
“We reasoned that focusing solely on oral sex would only capture part of this process. For women, partner-driven sexual investment can be expressed both through behaviors that directly provide sexual pleasure, such as oral sex, and behaviors that indicate desire, sexual interest, or sexual satisfaction,” Frankowska said. “Initiating sex may communicate that a partner is wanted and desired, whereas faking an orgasm may convey that a partner is sexually satisfied. Therefore, we considered oral sex, initiating sex, and faking an orgasm as different possible forms of mate retention strategies that provide sexual benefits.”
The study participants were 562 Polish women. Of these, 477 reported engaging in exclusively heterosexual sex and 85 reported engaging primarily in heterosexual sex. Participants ranged from 18 to 50 years old, with an average age of 30 years. Almost 64% of the women who participated had been in a relationship lasting more than three years.
Study participants completed an online survey. They first reported their demographic data, sexual orientation, and current relationship length. They then reported how often they initiated sex, performed oral sex, and faked orgasm during their past 10 sexual encounters. They also reported how often they experienced orgasm during the past 10 sexual encounters and how often they received oral stimulation from their partner.
Discrepancies in spousal values between participants and their partners were assessed using the Spousal Values Scale. On this scale, participants rated their own perceived mate value and separately rated their partner’s value. The scale itself consists of four items and asks respondents to rate their own and their partner’s overall likeability. Spousal value discrepancy was the difference in the evaluations women gave of themselves and their partners. Participants also completed a brief assessment of their motivation to sexually satisfy their partner and their perceived vulnerability to illness.
The results showed that women with high spousal value discrepancy, that is, women who rated their partner’s spousal value higher than their own, tended to be slightly more motivated to satisfy their partner sexually. Women who were more motivated to sexually satisfy their partners tended to initiate sex, have oral sex, and fake orgasms slightly more often. They also tended to be younger.
However, mate value discrepancies were not directly related to how often women initiated sex, performed fellatio, or faked orgasms. Instead, the study authors tested a statistical model that suggested an indirect relationship. In other words, the higher the mate value discrepancy, the more motivated a woman is to satisfy her partner sexually, and when that motivation is high, she is more likely to initiate sex, perform fellatio, and fake an orgasm. The results showed that such an indirect relationship exists between these factors.
“The main point is that sexual behavior in committed relationships can be shaped not only by desire and pleasure, but also by perceived relationship dynamics,” Frankowska said. “In a sample of Polish women in committed heterosexual relationships, women who perceived their male partners to be of higher mate value than themselves reported stronger motivation to sexually satisfy their partners. This motivation was associated with more frequent sexual initiation, oral sex, and fake orgasms.”
Further analysis revealed that the relationship between spousal value discrepancy and frequency of blowjobs did not depend on participating women’s perceived vulnerability to illness, enjoyment of giving blowjobs, or perceived enjoyment of their partner receiving blowjobs.
“The most surprising finding was that the indirect effects associated with oral sex did not depend on how much women reported enjoying oral sex or how much they believed their partners enjoyed receiving oral sex,” Frankowska noted. “This differs from previous studies in men, where effects were primarily found among men who enjoy oral sex. This suggests that the mechanisms may be partially similar in women and men, but not identical.”
This study contributes to scientific knowledge about human sexual behavior. However, the design of this study does not allow us to infer causality from the results. Furthermore, all data were self-reported, leaving room for reporting bias to influence the results. Previous research has shown that reporting bias tends to be a particularly important risk in studies that ask participants to report sensitive information about their sexual behavior. Finally, all reported associations were weak.
“Because this was a self-report study of sensitive sexual behavior, responses may have been influenced by memory, self-expression, or cultural norms regarding sexuality,” Frankowska told SciPost. “Because this study was also correlational, we cannot make strong claims of causation. We do not know whether perceptions of inconsistency in spousal values lead to these behaviors, whether these behaviors shape relationship dynamics, or whether both are influenced by other factors, such as relationship satisfaction or perceived risk of infidelity. Further research is needed to answer these questions.”
Future research will focus on better understanding the conditions under which sexual behaviors function as mate retention strategies and exploring cross-cultural differences in these behaviors.
“I think it’s important to interpret these findings with caution,” Frankowska added. “Sexual behavior is complex and has many meanings at the same time. Our study does not suggest that women’s sexual behaviors are reducible to mate retention or that these behaviors are inherently problematic. Our argument is more specific: a partner’s perception of an imbalance in mate value may lead to a sexual It may be one of the factors that shapes the motivation to satisfy, and this motivation may be related to certain sexual behaviors in committed relationships. This may not necessarily be conscious, calculating, or manipulative; it may be one of the broader psychological mechanisms of relationship dynamics. ”
The paper “Polish women’s sexual strategies in mate retention: initiating sex, pretending to orgasm, performing oral sex in response to mate value discrepancies – evidence from pre-registered studies” was authored by Natalia Frankowska, Aleksandra Szymkow and Andrzej Galbarczyk.
