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Women who have a lot of male friends and colleagues, and are seen as attractive by other males have more sex with their boyfriends, researchers have found.

Researcher say the key to the discovery was down to sexual rivalry.

They studied almost 400 men in long terms relationships.

Did the Sex and the City girls have it all wrong?Women who have a lot of male friends and colleagues, and are seen as attractive by other males have more sex with their boyfriends, researchers have found.

'A lot of work shows that men are sexually aroused by their partner when they estimate a greater likelihood of partner infidelity,' Michael Pham of Oakland University, lead author on the study, told Fusion. 

'This does not mean that men want their partner to cheat on them. 

'Rather, this means that if they estimate a greater likelihood of their partner's infidelity, then they may (subconsciously) want to have sex with her to enter into sperm competition.'

The team say the behaviour is simply human nature, and males are unaware of the phenomenon, or what the are doing.

Similar patterns of behaviour have been observed in various species, from mice to birds to insects.

'Nonhuman males attend to the number of potential sexual rivals in the local environment to assess sperm competition risk.,' the researchers wrote.

'Males of these species sometimes perform more frequent in-pair copulations to increase the likelihood of success in sperm competition.' 

Researchers say that having a lot of male colleagues and friends can actually boost a woman's sex life wiht their boyfriend due to sexual rivalry.

The study is the first to test this in humans. 

'The results indicate that men whose in-pair partner has more male coworkers and friends (i.e., potential sexual rivals) also perform more frequent in-pair copulations, but only among men who perceive their partner to be particularly attractive relative to assessments of partners by other men in the sample,' the Oakland University researchers wrote.   

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