As opposed to simply unzipping, or pulling down the pants, or tearing off the underwear, etc. Yeah, I know it doesn’t always happen… but most of the time.
My question is why? Is this a natural behavior or something drilled into us by mass media? Is it the same across cultures? Through history?
It’s messy if you do it right. You’ll (hopefully!) wash your clothes eventually, but that doesn’t mean you want jizz all over it en route to the washer.
My life’s experiences would lead me to believe the newer the couple is, the more likely all the clothes will come off. After a few years, that doesn’t happen so much. Not that you necessarily get into a rut, but that you don’t have as many evenings dedicated to nothing but sex like you tend to do when the relationship is young.
They were probably having it quite a few thousands of years before clothing existed.
If skin-to-skin contact, shared body heat, and full-body touch weren’t important, I wouldn’t need a partner, just a toy. (Toys don’t ever get moody, after all.) There’s way more to sex than tab-A-in-slot-B.
Well, if your pants are around your knees, it makes things a little annoying. I mean, you could, but it’s easier not to. If you’re wearing a skirt, I guess you could just hike it up. And I suppose no one needs to remove their shirt. It is more fun, though, to have skin to skin contact. It feels nicer. “Fun” is a good enough reason for me!
I’ll echo this. Besides male and female sex fluids, sex also tends to cause quite a bit of sweating. Getting out of your clothes leaves you to soil only the sheets, which are by nature something that can be kept private from suspicious eyes (like, for instance, if they get worn down from being washed a lot. Maximizing the soiling of the cheapest, least visible cloth items you possess, while minimizing the soiling of outer and public items is a key item in the history of clothing and other cloth usage.)
Clothes also get in the way of the good bits. If I’m going to have sex, I want to have my hands all over that body.
All the reasons stated above apply. I am a visual being. I need to see female skin, shape and bits for maximum enjoyment. Sex ends up in a mess, and it’s easier to keep the mess down by being naked from the get go. I get physically very hot while having sex, up to the point of having to tear my clothes off to continue, if I have foolishly started clothed. Creative sex requires quite a bit of flexibility / contorsionist skills, very hard to do while semi-nude.