Saw this over on /r/psychologyofsex; a summation of a study of women and men in the U.S. and Hungary around the reasons that people report masturbating: https://www.sexandpsychology.com/blog/2023/5/29/masturbation-may-motivations-for-self-pleasure/

Most of the results probably won't be that surprising but just to share some highlights.

Here's the main three reasons people — women and men alike — give for masturbating:

To achieve sexual pleasure/satisfaction

To decrease feelings of sexual tension and drive

To help relieve stress/anxiety and relax

There were no significant differences between women and men in this regard.

overall, unsatisfying partnered sex was not a highly endorsed reason to masturbate—less than 4% of the men across the sample reported it as their number one motivator

This is useful for those who think that masturbation is a sign of dissatisfaction with partnered sex. We talk about this a lot here but most people jack/jill off because it feels good, not because they're trying to avoid having sex with their partners.

The study also didn't find strong support for the so-called "compensatory model" of masturbation that suggests that people masturbate to compensate for the lack of sex in a relationship.

For men who had sex once a week or less, they cited pleasure and the need to decrease sexual tension or desire as motivating factors for masturbation more often. However, the correlation between these two factors was relatively low, suggesting a weak association.

In other words, they're not tossing out the possibility, they're just pointing out that it's not as strong an association as is often assumed.