Wednesday, 29 October 2008

58 per cent of women said they are less interested in sex after a bad night's sleep

new survey says women would prefer sleep while men would prefer sex with that extra hour we get by setting back the clock this weekend. But it reinforces gender stereotypes and "doesn't help couples," says a Vancouver sex therapist.

The survey, conducted by an advocacy group for mattress manufacturers, found that 55 per cent of women would prefer to get more sleep with that extra hour compared to only 31 per cent of men.

It also found that nearly 57 per cent of men would prefer to be having sex in that extra hour compared to only 32 per cent of women. Nevermind that most men probably couldn't last the hour. But could it be that women really would prefer to sleep?
"I think that a survey like this really doesn't help couples," Pega Ren, a Vancouver sex therapist, told CTV.ca. "I think it enforces the stereotype that women do not desire sex and that men are always the aggressors. That women have something that men want and that women don't particularly want to give it to them."
"If you say to me, you have an extra hour in your life on a Saturday night, would you rather have an extra hour of sex or an extra hour of sleep, I may well say, give me the sleep, it's a Saturday night," Ren said. "But if you said to me, we're going to send you off to the hot spring and we're going to take care of the babysitter and we're going to give you an extra $50 on the room, now what's your answer, I may have a very different answer for you."
The online survey was conducted by Leger Marketing for the Better Sleep Council Canada, a group that promotes "the value that a better quality mattress and foundation can bring when regularly replaced within the sleep environment."
No surprise, then, that the survey found that 58 per cent of women said they are less interested in sex after a bad night's sleep, compared to 43 per cent of men. And 62 per cent of respondents said a better bed would improve their quality of sleep and one quarter said a better bed would improve their sex life.
"I've had the same mattress for years and when I want a better sleep I flip the mattress," Ren said. Ren said such surveys shut down avenues of communication between couples, who should really be talking about the factors that may influence their sex-versus-sleep preferences. "It makes it difficult for us to talk about these things because we assume that the answers are pre-determined," Ren said. "They're not."

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