Looking for something hot to do this weekend? Why don’t you get carnal and… cuddle? A recent study conducted at The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, involving more than 1,000 couples from five countries, suggests that it’s quite important for – men.

That’s right, despite rampant stereotypes pegging women as the more romantic gender, research shows that it’s the guys who find kissing, cuddling, and caressing more important than women when it comes to happy relationships.  More men than women also report being happy in their relationship, a finding made even more interesting when you consider that more women reported being sexually satisfied. (This was especially true for those gals who had been in their relationship for at least 15 years.)

All of this challenges traditional gender-role beliefs claiming that men are more sexually-oriented, while women are more love-oriented. Men, supposedly, only provide touch and affection to seduce and have sex. Yet research in various arenas regularly suggests that many men are real romantics:

• Studies consistently show that men can separate love and sex, but their most erotic experiences take place in the relational context. It is the emotional that makes it special.

• Men hold more romantic views of male-female relations than do women.

• Men tend to fall in love earlier in relationships. It has also been found that men tend to show more brain activity than women in regions associated with visual processing, especially the face, perhaps enhancing a male’s ability to fall in love and explaining why men generally fall in love faster than women.

• Men tend to cling longer to a dying love affair, e.g., three times as many men as women commit suicide after a disastrous love affair.

Even if they don’t always admit it, many guys desire some tender love and care from their partner on a regular basis. Whether a counselor, therapist, educator, or lover, those concerned with cultivating happy relationships need to do more in acknowledging and supporting a male’s touch needs too. 

Being secure has never meant so much to the quality of your relationship. According to researchers at the University of the Basque Country in Spain, people who feel secure in their romantic relationship have a more satisfactory sex life than those who are insecure with their partner. Being secure also means having a greater ability to be more attuned with the affection one doles out.  

Such findings are based on a sample of 211 long-term couples, ages 20 – 65, who answered questions regarding sexual satisfaction, sexual behavior and care, and their level of conflict in their erotic desire. Participants were divided into two big groups depending on their affective model – insecure versus secure - with the former group then categorized as having either an anxious or ambivalent attachment style.

As expected, insecure individuals faired far worse in their relationships than secure people in being less happy and experiencing more conflict in their sexual desire. People described as anxious-ambivalent were more compulsive in their care for their lovers, while those described as avoidant were more controlling and experienced more conflict in their sexual desire.

So what could this mean for your relationship? If you’re the anxious type, then it’s likelier that you’re clinging onto your partner, as well as compulsively caring for your sweetie. If you’re the avoidant type, then it’s more probable that you’re evading the relationship, never truly allowing yourself to own the union. Hence, you’re probably experiencing more intimacy problems. And if one of you is anxious and the other is avoidant, then you probably already know well that this disastrous combination is likeliest to end up on the ropes; such couples often end up needing to go to counseling.

In resolving such issues, researchers recommend that each person actively support the other emotionally, e.g., when one is feeling down. Lovers also need to recognize their own need for support and ask for such whenever they feel anxious. The ability to put yourself in what they call a ‘position of dependency’ allows for a better state of being, ultimately making for a healthier, more secure relationship. And that can make for a better sex life!