The Science of Love: 40 Enchanting Facts About Sex, Love & Relationships

In psychoanalytic literature, a Madonna-whore complex is the inability to maintain sexual arousal within a committed, loving relationship. Such men can only have arousal with women they see as degraded.

2. An Intern at NASA once stole a safe full of moon rocks, sprinkled them on a hotel bed, and had sex with his girlfriend on top of them. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

3. Movies can hire an Intimacy Coordinator for sex scenes so that they could remain safe, follow rules, oversee the sex scenes to avoid potential issues, and teach Directors and Actors how to run a rehearsal without emulating sexual movement but instead “sculpting the physical actions using plain words.”

4. Fearful-Avoidant adults are torn between a desire for intimacy and a fear of sharing their emotions. They want close relationships, but have trouble trusting others

5. Male fertility is highly correlated with the length between the scrotum and anus aka the taint. The average size is 2 inches.

In France in the 1500s, women could charge their husbands with impotence. He would have to become erect and show he could ejaculate in a courtroom. If he failed, he could demand a Trial by Congress and attempt to have sex with his wife in front of the experts.

7. A study in 2014 found scams that target lonely individuals is the leading cause of Internet fraud. Women are far more likely to be targeted than men, making up almost 70 percent of all romance cons.

8. Frequent sex in a relationship isn’t associated with self-reported happiness in couples but is associated with an increase in an instinctive, positive emotion towards your partner.

9. Women and men who like the taste of beer are 60% more likely to have sex on the first date.

10. Men initiate sex more than 3x as often as women do in a long-term, heterosexual relationship. However, sex happens far more often when the woman takes the initiative, implying that it’s the woman who sets limits, and that frequency of sex depends on how enthusiastic a couple is about it.

There was a custom in ancient Babylon compelling all women at least once in their lives to go to the temple of Aphrodite and have sex with a stranger.

12. In 2004 at the Smithsonian, a rare female White-Naped Crane named Walnut fell in love with a zoologist named Chris Crowe, who was able to rear her eggs without Walnut hurting other males. White-Naped Cranes are monogamous and stress easily so Chris must stay until he, or Walnut, dies.

13. Despite millennials often being seen as a ‘promiscuous’ generation, they have fewer sexual partners than previous generations and have less overall sex than their own parents.

14. Sex toys are banned in some US states, such as Alabama. Flirting is banned in San Antonio, Texas. Oral sex is banned in Indiana and sleeping naked is illegal in Minnesota.

15. In 1985, a doctor in Lovell, Wyoming was convicted of sexually assaulting patients for over 25 years. One of the reasons he was able to get away with it for so long was that many of his victims were strict Mormons and didn’t know what a proper pelvic exam, or even sex, felt like.

When Olympic organizers found condoms on the roofs of housing for athletes in the Seoul Games in 1988, the Olympic Association outlawed outdoor sex in the Olympic village.

17. Ida Craddock was a 19th-century sex educator who wrote pamphlets that advised couples on the importance of foreplay, complications of having too big of a penis, and how to properly rupture the hymen. She later committed suicide after being sentenced to prison for breaking obscenity laws.

18. In a village in Turkey, women were fed up with walking to get water, so they withheld sex from their husbands until they fixed the waterline. They got what they wanted within one month.

19. One of the poorest countries on earth, Gambia, is a hotbed for female sex tourism. Wealthy older European woman seeking out young African men is the country’s main attraction.

20. Nymphomania is not an encompassing term for sex addiction. Nymphomania only refers to women's sexual addiction. Satyromania is the men’s version.

Data gathered in a 2012 study indicated that 76% of gaming couples feel that their RPG time is a positive force in their relationship. The research also suggested that interacting in-game increased a couple’s satisfaction with their marriage.

22. 2suit is a spacesuit designed for sex in space. Partners wearing the 2suit can attach themselves to each other via Velcro, giving space for intimacy.

23. According to a 2011 study published in the International Journal of Impotence Research, eating 100 grams of pistachios at lunch every day for three weeks led to increased blood flow to “the problem area,” leading to a significant decrease in erectile dysfunction.

24. Aztec midwives advised women to continue having sex until the 7th month of pregnancy, saying that, if women abstained, their children would be sickly and weak. Apparently, modern studies have found that exposure to semen can facilitate “immune tolerance” of the resulting fetus; i.e., the pregnancy can have a higher chance of success.

25. In Ancient Greece, prostitutes were classified into two classes; the Pornai and the Hetairai. The Pornai served many men at once and frequently worked on the street. In contrast, Hetarai were educated, had few clients, and provided companionship and intellectual discussion as well as sex.