I’ve seen a lot of comments recently questioning, criticizing, or attempting to categorize the reasons women have sex. Any kind of sex. Sex in FWBs, ONSs, LTRs, marriages. The whole spectrum of what we would consider normalized, recognized sexual relationships.

And it appears several of the commentators (who I assume to be men) do not seem to understand why women choose to have sex and why their choices might change or differ from man to man. So I wanted to take a moment to break it down from a woman’s perspective. Ladies feel free to add/question anything you think I might have missed or am incorrect about.

When a woman has sex, it is dependent upon the following factors, including but not limited to:

-Her state of mind (including mental health status)

-Her current attitude about sex and about her potential partner

-Her age, location, culture, background, upbringing, religion, demographics, etc.

-Her relationship status

-Her goal(s) with that particular potential partner

-Her emotional attachment/intimacy level with that particular potential partner

-What she thinks/feels about her potential partner

-Likewise, how he makes her feel

-Her sexual attraction to her potential partner

These factors I’ve listed are in no particular order of weight or degree. Notice how lots of these things can change. Notice how lots of these things are very dependent on her while others are very dependent on him.

There is no set “rulebook” for which women will always have sex or never have sex. There is no criterion or checklist that can be analyzed in an effort to “crack the code”. It’s all relative and contextual. Sometimes it's more about him, sometimes more about her, sometimes about both. This is why some women will say for certain sexual encounters “it was just sex” while that same women can have a very different perspective with respect to her other sexual encounters. It’s why sex can be meaningful in one instance and less meaningful/not meaningful in another.

So ladies, do you agree? Do you have other factors to add? And men, does this make sense to you? Is there anything I’ve listed that is confusing? Can you see how sex is contextual to women? Do you think all or most men approach sex vastly differently? In what ways?

Obligatory disclaimer that I am not purporting to represent all women, this is my perspective, although I know plenty of women who agree with me.

EDIT: reformatted the factors since they weren't meant to appear in paragraph style like that. ALSO the part where I said there's no "code to crack" was not me intending to make this about criticizing TRP sexual strategy tactics (not that there aren't any to criticize, but it's not my central point). This post is meant to address the fact that I've seen other commenters on PPD and TRP who don't understand that sex is contextual to women, i.e., they do it for different reasons and assign different values to particular sexual encounters for a variety of reasons. Sorry if that sentence confused things.