Romantic couples' communication strategies, sexual satisfaction and initiation of sexual activities in long-term romantic relationships
Abstract
In romantic couples, communication strategies in everyday conflict situations are related to sexual activity initiation and overall sexual satisfaction. Gender differences were also found.
We tried to take an innovative look at the possible association between couple's typical relationship communication behaviors and the area of sexual life, here specifically sexual satisfaction and the degree of distribution of the initiation of sexual activities between partners. In this study, we present a new experimental method for relationship communication research - the Relationship drama and its results in the form of behavioral dominance strategies, including a wide range of diverse qualities of behavior.
Out of our 15 behavioral strategies, we found a correlation in six. There are two related to lower male satisfaction, Explanation of Insights by women and male Silent fuming.
Lower female sexual satisfaction is related to male Kind Reasoning. We found stronger correlations, confirmed by the partner, in lower sexual satisfaction and initiation of activities, for two strategies, Kind reasoning by men and Explaining insights by women.
Women initiated sexual activity more when their typical strategies were Kind Reasoning, Problem Denial/Sabotage, and Attention shift/Pseudo-Solutions. Given the context of an exploratory mixed-method study, performing statistical analysis with a lower number of participants could cause possible statistical inaccuracies.
It is appropriate to understand mentioned findings rather as an indicator of directions for further research in the field of romantic relationship communication.