Baseline Mercy Sex Rates Persist in Women With Low Desire, Study Finds

PsyPost reports that analysis of baseline data from nearly a decade of randomized trials for hypoactive sexual desire disorder shows women in monogamous heterosexual relationships typically log about 2.0–3.0 sexually satisfying events every 28 days before any medication. This consistency held across four US trials of flibanserin (2.0–3.0) and four testosterone-patch trials (2.5–2.9), with European data around 2.41 and country variation (1.12–4.19). Two bremelanotide trials showed lower baselines (~1.2) likely due to a placebo run-in. The researchers label this habitual activity “mercy sex,” suggesting biopsychosocial factors—emotional closeness, partner dynamics, and social conditioning—may drive obligatory sex and cautions that measuring treatment success by event frequency can misstate true desire, especially given sample limits (heterosexual, monogamous) and subjective “satisfying” definitions.