Several studies on finding differences in women’s sexual desire or interest across the menstrual cycle have found out that women have more sexual fantasies when they are ovulating. A study that was published in 2007 found that when ovulating women were interviewed, they preferred masculine and macho guys. A more recent study has found that a woman experiences an increase in sexual fantasiesduring the most fertile periods of her menstrual cycle.

Study author Samantha Dawson said that sexual fantasies and sexual daydreams do not depend on the availability of sex partners implying that fantasies are more representative of sexual interest than how much of sex a woman has. To conduct the study, the researches paid 27 single heterosexual women to keep an online diary of their sexual daydreams or fantasies every day for about a month. By counting reverse from the previous menstrual cycle, the researchers kept a ten-day window within which every woman will be likely to ovulate. During these ten days, each woman undertook a self urine test to find if they were ovulating. The women were not told that they were being tested for ovulation by keeping the ovulation tests in neutral packaging.

The women reported that they experienced 0.77 sexual fantasies per day on an average. This was seen to be much higher than what was found in earlier studies that said that men fantasised once per day and women fantasised once per week.

It was found that the frequency of fantasies increased in women, who were around three days surrounding ovulation. The women also reported that the fantasies were more arousing than the ones they had during the non-fertile days.

In several studies, men had reported to have had more visual and explicit fantasies than females, who tend to give more attention to the emotions or feelings they have towards the man instead of his masculinity or the kind of sexual acts they indulge in in the fantasies. In the current study, researchers found that women looked at pictures of masculine and feminine men as well as women at least three points across their menstrual cycle, but found hardly any interest during the fertile periods.

The researchers found that women were more interested in men during their most fertile periods. As far as the characters in the fantasies are concerned, women had about 95 per cent male characters across their menstrual cycle.

The Study has been publishes in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour.

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