Know Means Know
Can you guess what your lover wants? 

Marcia Kaye

We may not want to believe it, but lovers don’t seem to be especially good at predicting their partners’ personal preferences. In a Dutch study from Tilburg University released last December, almost half of all lovers were worse at predicting their partners’ likes and dislikes than those of a stranger. Even worse — the more we know about our paramours, the poorer our success rate is likely to be. While the study focused on preferences for different styles of bedroom furniture, the authors suggest that the results reinforce earlier findings about what actually happens in the bedroom. “The possession of elaborate knowledge about familiar targets may cause people to perceive themselves as better predictors than they really are,” the authors write.

Illustration: Russell Tate/istockphoto

How can this happen? One reason may be that early on in a relationship we overestimate the similarities between our partners and ourselves, says sex educator Dr. Robin Milhausen, an assistant professor of family relations and human sexuality at the University of Guelph in Ontario and host of the TV series Sex, Toys & Chocolate.

Milhausen’s own research found that often men will try to please their ladies using moves that they themselves would enjoy receiving — with sometimes unsuccessful results. “Many women told us they get really turned off when their male partners go straight for the genitals,” she says.

We also rely far too much on sexual stereotypes, and here women are at least as bad as men. In a 2004 study of 152 couples conducted at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, the women — but not the men — significantly underestimated their partners’ ideal duration of both foreplay and intercourse. Not only that, but in a 2002 Ipsos Reid poll of 1,310 married Canadians, more than one third of the male respondents wished they could ask their wives simply to be more affectionate — a surprisingly humble request.

We’re also guilty of assuming that our partners of today have not changed since the day we met. While it can be endearing for long-time couples to see their partners as unchanged over decades, in truth we all change — as a result of hormonal alterations, work and family stress, illness and the simple passing of the years. By seeing our partners as we’ve always seen them, we rely too heavily on old information and ignore cues that might give us new insight. So a woman may not realize that her husband, who was always the aggressor in bed, may now sometimes need her to do the initiating. Likewise, a man may not recognize that his wife, who shunned sex toys and erotic videos when there were curious young children at home, might now be open to these accessories.

How to know? Ask gently, and listen earnestly.