The Variety of Human Motivation

Today's New York Times has an interesting article about recent research into the things that motivate people to have sex. Researchers at the University of Texas have categorized 237 - that's right, 237 - reasons that people have sex, ranging from the Hollywoodish romantic reasons to purely physical reasons to less enlightened ones ("because of a bet," aka The "Dinah-Moe Humm" Principle). There is, I suppose, a happy ending to the study:

The best news is that both men and women ranked the same reason most often: 'I was attracted to the person.'

The rest of the top 10 for each gender were also almost all the same, including 'I wanted to express my love for the person,' 'was sexually aroused and wanted the release' and 'It’s fun.'

Makes sense to me.