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Elizabeth Barrett Browning once famously asked, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." She came up with eight.
Now psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin say they have catalogued the most thorough taxonomy of sexual motivation ever, categorizing a total of 237 reasons people dance between the sheets.
The reasons range from the obvious ("it feels good") and the devious ("I wanted to get a raise") to the romantic ("I was in love") and the mundane ("I was bored") to the religious ("I wanted to feel closer to God") and the counterintuitive ("I wanted to get rid of a headache").
Others were disturbingly manipulative, including "to give someone a sexually transmitted disease," and "to gain access to that person's friend."
"When people think about why they have sex, they think it feels good or there's an emotional gratification or to have babies, but we knew it was much more complex than that," said Cindy Meston, a sex researcher and Vancouver native who compiled the list with her colleague David Buss.
The findings were published in the August issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Researchers asked more than 440 men and women aged of 17 to 52 to list all the reasons they could think of why they or someone they knew had ever had sex. Most were enrolled in undergraduate and graduate psychology classes.
The group came up with 715 that were whittled down to what researchers deemed 237 distinct reasons. Another 1,549 undergraduate students were then asked to indicate how frequently any of the reasons led them to have sex. Virgins were asked to weigh the likelihood that any reason could lead them to have sex.
Some of the findings jibed with conventional wisdom about the sexual habits of men and women. For instance, men were far more likely than women to give reasons based on physical appearance, such as "the person had a desirable body," and those that suggest an inclination toward carving another notch on the bedpost, such as "I wanted to increase the number of partners I have experienced."
Women exceeded men in embracing emotional factors for sex, such as "I realized that I was in love."
However, the findings also shattered the stereotype that women more often than men use sex for utilitarian purposes and to obtain preferential treatment.
Men were more likely to say they had sex "to change the topic of conversation" and "to get a favour from someone" and "to be popular." Women were also less likely to have sex as a way of keeping their partner satisfied.
Almost all of the 25 most common reasons each gender gave for having sex were the same, with "I was attracted to the person" being the top for both men and women. Others included, "I wanted to express my love for the person" and "I was horny."
Sex researchers not affiliated with the study praised its ambition, but pointed to what they perceived to be limitations in the methodology.
Some of the reasons offered bordered on duplicative, for instance: "I'm addicted to sex" (No. 126) and "I am a sex addict" (No. 196); and "it seemed like good exercise" (No. 131) and "I wanted to burn calories" (No. 176).
Robin Milhausen, a University of Guelph sex researcher and host of the Discovery Health channel talk show Sex, Toys & Chocolate, noted that more than 350 students surveyed admitted to never having had sex and that a sexual history was not available for another 300 or so.
"I certainly think that before you've had sex you can't imagine the reasons that might lead you to have sex," said Dr. Milhausen, adding that the study focused primarily on the sexual inclinations of undergraduate students, whose habits may differ wildly from older and young populations.
"When people interpret these results and say these are the reasons people are having sex, you have to put in the caveat that these are the reasons people predominately 18 to 22 have sex," she said.
Dr. Meston, who has studied triggers for sexual desire in women, acknowledged that the study was limited in scope beyond the undergraduate age group, but stressed that it was intended as an entry point for a much larger and more comprehensive study of sexual motivators.
She said she and Dr. Buss are now collecting data from different age ranges.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg we can't generalize beyond," Dr. Meston said. "For me, the biggest question is how these sexual motivators change across a lifespan."
