Faking an orgasm: does it keep your mate faithful?

It’s only polite to ooh and ahh over a friend’s baby. And when dining on a pal's famous roast chicken recipe you'd better make all the enthusiastic Mmm and Yum sounds you can muster. Given these very reasonable social expectations, it’s only natural that a kindhearted gal is going to make similar efforts for her partner during the act of love—and even when the baby is homely and the chicken bone-dry, if you get my drift. 

Faking an orgasm isn't a crime, surely. But are there more complex motives behind the performance than simple good manners? One new study (via Elle.com) suggests there's more to all that exaggerated panting and mewling than meets the eye. 

A research paper published in the academic journal Archives of Sexual Behavior suggests that anxiety may be the real reason some women feel the need to re-enact the diner scene in When Harry Met Sally twice a week.  

For the study, researchers talked orgasms with approximately 50 women between the ages of 18 to 26. Of the women polled, 54 percent admitted to faking an orgasm. (I’ll have whatever the 46 percent who said they didn’t fake it are having.) The study found that women who feared that their partners might stray were even more likely to fake an orgasm. 

That’s not the only example of how anxiety influenced the women’s behaviour, however. The researchers also discovered that these women also reported they make more of an effort to appeal to their partner physically by dressing to please, for example. They also confessed to monitoring their amours daily activities more closely. 

Is there a positive connection between deluding your partner into believing he’s the king of the Sealy Posturepedic and his overall faithfulness? Beats me. What the study does reveal, however, is how strong the fear of infidelity is for a significant number of women. Now if only that problem could be 'yeah, baby-d' out of existence...