Nope, it's a trope that has no basis in reality.
"Nearly as many women as men have extramarital affairs and research shows that what most of them want is not an emotional connection but a sexual one. If the men get too clingy, the women break it off and go on to the next guy. This pretty much belies the notion that women crave an emotional connection in order to feel desire. It may look that way at times, but it’s simply that having one is a good way to get the other things that help women feel safe enough to open up sexually.
If somebody really cares about you, the chances that they will kill you or rape you goes down significantly; the chance that they will publicly talk about what a slut you are goes down significantly. There’s still a risk, but it’s to a much lower degree. Emotional intimacy is a safety net more than a requirement for female sexual desire. Real emotional connection does enhance sex, but that’s true for everybody.
Alicia Walker, an assistant professor of sociology said, “The women I studied went on the [Ashley Madison] site. Created a profile. Checked back in for responses. Vetted candidates. And then met them in person. Then they ‘auditioned’ them. This was a very intentional process,” Walker emphasized. They undertook it, they told Walker, because they wanted to find partners. For sex.
They were not looking for an exit strategy or a new husband. They did not seek emotional connection or companionship. They wanted a solution to a dilemma: they felt unable or were unwilling to end their sexless or sexually unsatisfying partnerships or marriages, but they also wanted great sex. After years of sexual deprivation and dissatisfaction and struggling to stay monogamous, the women, who otherwise were unremarkable, decided to do something about it.”
Primatologist, Meredith Small has noted that seeking novelty is the single most observable trait among all the sexual behaviors, preferences, and drivers of female primates. Female primates are actually the complete opposite of how we’ve been taught to imagine them — as reluctant breeders or seekers of “intimacy” with a single “best” mate or only seeking to mate with the alpha. I’m not sure why we imagine that human primates are any different?
There’s quite a bit of research that suggests that if women are not concerned for their safety in some way and feel likely that they will have a pleasurable experience, they are just as open to casual sex as men are. A 2017 study showed that among women aged twenty-five to twenty-nine, group sex and threesome experience equaled that of men the same age and women were nearly twice as likely to have gone to a dungeon, BDSM, swingers’, or sex party, which pretty handily challenges the long-held assumption that men are the naturally more sexually adventurous ones or that women primarily want an emotional connection."
Edit: Further evidenced by 30 years of hook-up culture and 10 years of Tinder.
