We got interested in sexual styles from research studies suggesting that various personality types react differently to sexually charged situations. Sexual styles are the innate patterns we express in our personal approaches to such situations. Predictable differences show up in the way that each of us would handle a particular scenario.
To probe this intriguing theory we asked a series of questions in 2008 to find out how our respondents fit into sexual styles. We took a self assessment approach to the questions which allowed respondents to sort out their best fit among available options.
First, we asked respondents to select from a list of traits to identify the one that tends to predominate their approach to sex.
Here’s the way our respondents sorted.
We also asked respondents to select an appropriate name for their sexual style.
What name would you give your sexual style?
Adventurous 31%
Intimate 26%
Conventional 20%
Impulsive 20%
Anarchist 3%
The result shows a unique way of slicing the gay male population pie. We noticed a large migration away from the term “conventional” to describe a “regular horn-dog” in favour of “adventurous”.
Maybe adventurous is the way the largest proportion of gay guys like to think of themselves even if they are just “regular guys”. But the results also show just how hard it is to describe “normal” when it comes to sex. You end up having to explain “conventional” by what it is not: i.e., “not kinky”. Even so, large portions of gay guys think of themselves as either “intimate” or “impulsive”. The self described “anarchistic”, kinky rule breakers appear to be a small minority. Interestingly, when we cross-tabulated style traits with style names we noticed that whatever name you give to a sexual style, one trait will dominate but all other traits are represented.
So, even if you think of yourself as an intimate romantic the impulsive kinky rebel is still in there with you. And so it goes that there is an intimate side to every thrill seeker. How do these findings fit your experience?
Next: how sexual styles affect action
