Harmatophilia Heaven

Anxious about your abilities in the sack? Just remember, the worse you are the bigger a smile you'll bring to a harmatophiliac!

Defined quite simply, harmatophilia is sexual arousal from the mistakes of others. This widespread philia predominantly affects males.

Using a more broad definition, one could say that a vast majority of men prefer (and perhaps are even aroused by) having a partner with less sexual experience or competence then themselves. Just listen to a man wax lyrical about taking a girl's 'cherry' and you get the picture.

Now, whether the cause of this arousal is biological, purely to strengthen a fragile ego or to boost self esteem is unknown, but an American study seems to demonstrate how men and women may subconciously play into this need for male dominance in the sexpertise stakes.

Psychologist Norman R Brown and his team at the University of Michigan have carried out a series of surveys to investigate the great divide between the number of sexual partners claimed by men and women.

In one 2006 survey of 2065 male and female sexually active forty-somethings, they found that women claimed an average of 8.6 sexual partners versus the male claim of 31.9. Brown and his team delved deeper later in the survey by asking the participants to rate the truthfulness of their responses. 5% admitted lying and a further 10% said they were aware their answer was inaccurate.

Brown determined from his study that a large reason for the discrepancy was due to calculation methods. It seems women rely on 'raw count' while men rely on a similarly flawed method: approximation.

It seems whether male or female, we're all playing within the rules of Harmatophilia Heaven.