Abstract
Sex is integral to maintaining a satisfying long-term romantic relationship such as marriage. It is thus important to identify the factors that promote sexual satisfaction in these relationships. To this end, we examined the extent to which a crucial evolved individual difference—sexual disgust sensitivity—impacts people’s sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction. Using a two-year longitudinal study of 102 newlywed couples (204 individuals), we demonstrated that, rather than exerting main effects, the interaction of both couple members’ sexual disgust sensitivities was indirectly associated with marital satisfaction through sexual satisfaction. People whose partners’ sexual disgust sensitivities were relatively similar (versus dissimilar) to their own maintained higher levels of sexual satisfaction across the first two years of marriage, which was associated with similarly elevated marital satisfaction. Not only do these findings highlight the importance of integrating evolutionary perspectives and relationship science, they underscore the value of conducting dyadic research to examine the unique intersection of both couple members’ characteristics for people’s relationship outcomes.
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Notes
Four previously published papers have drawn from this broader longitudinal study (Du et al., 2020; French et al., 2019; French & Meltzer, 2020; Hicks et al., 2021). Du et al. (2020) used one measure of marital satisfaction (the semantic differential) to illustrate and compare multiple Bayesian synthesis approaches. French et al. (2019) examined the associations between both couple members’ sociosexual orientations, marital satisfaction, and dissolution. French and Meltzer (2020) examined the extent to which a given woman’s changes in hormonal contraceptive use relative to her use at relationship formation is associated with her sexual satisfaction. Finally, Hicks et al. (2021) examined the extent to which people are able to explicitly report their implicitly assessed partner evaluations.
We provide all measures on the OSF: https://osf.io/bstf3/?view_only=355462d11c3748e2936cb272d5ac2d77.
We additionally calculated McDonald’s omega reliability coefficients for all multi-item scales; these coefficients were nearly identical to the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients.
It is worth noting that identical results emerged in our primary analyses when we used each individual measure of marital satisfaction separately.
The results remained unchanged in analyses using partners’ individual reports of relationship length prior to marriage.
We provide all syntax and outputs on the OSF: https://osf.io/bstf3/?view_only=355462d11c3748e2936cb272d5ac2d77.
Analyses using only the heterosexual couples (i.e., excluding the five same-sex couples) revealed no associations were moderated by participants’ biological sex, supporting our use of indistinguishable models.
Analyses demonstrated that a model including Time × Time fit the data better than a model not including Time × Time, χ2(1) = 4.16, p = .041.
Analyses demonstrated this model fit the data no better than a model that included the quadratic estimate of Time, χ2(1) = 0.004, p = .950; we thus excluded the quadratic estimate.
We additionally conducted a lagged analysis to examine whether participants’ sexual satisfaction at any given assessment was associated with their marital satisfaction at the next assessment (i.e., four months later), controlling for their marital satisfaction at the same assessment as well as both couple members’ sexual disgust sensitivities and their interaction; it was not (p = .239).
We had the data available to explore three possible mediators—people’s sexual need fulfillment, people’s sexual problems, and couples’ frequency of sex. Nevertheless, none of these potential mediators were associated with the interaction of couple members’ sexual disgust sensitivities. We provide these null results in Supplementary Materials. Additional analyses further revealed that these null associations did not differ across husbands and wives.
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Peters, S.D., Meltzer, A.L. Newlywed Couples’ Own and Partner Sexual Disgust Sensitivities Interact to Predict Their Marital Satisfaction Through Their Sexual Satisfaction. Arch Sex Behav 50, 2563–2577 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01872-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01872-y