In the quaintly named "Archives of Sexual Behavior", a most juicy article was published, so juicy, that even the New York Times reported on it. Namely, Cindy Meston and David Buss, researchers of psychology from Austin Texas, took it upon themselves to ask as many people as possible (well about 2000), just exactly why one would possibly want to have sex.

This is a question that burns in us all, from the head down to our loins, even for those of us who have withdrawn ourselves to Jesuit monasteries preparing for a life of sanctified celibacy. Although psychologists would like to point out that, deep down inside, we are notoriously bad self-reporters, still, the reason that people justify to themselves, towards the primary biological imperative of reproduction, is endlessly fascinating. Such is the stuff that novels are made of.

Of course, the list is off-limits to the public eye, following the academic-publishing principle of making the government pay twice for publicly-funded research. Nevertheless, I will breach manners and post one of the tables here. In particular, I find the list of most infrequent reasons, the fascinating of them all. Whereas the most popular list contains predictably boring reasons, "I want to express my love ... blah blah blah", it's the reasons that are rare that cut to the quick. All of these reasons were considered by somebody out there as the most important reason, and these are listed in order of infrequency.

I heartily suggest using these as a writing exercise (write a story where one of the following reasons was used for sex)