Does marriage affect sexual satisfaction?

On TV shows and throughout pop culture, marriage seems to be the butt of lots of jokes-especially when it comes to married sex lives. 

Well, according to a study done by the 1992 National Health and Social Life survey, the type of relationship a person is in can actually have an affect on a person’s experience with sexual pleasure. But not in the way this cartoon makes it seem!

The researchers believed that due to evolutionary perspectives, women-but not men- will be more satisfied emotionally and physically in sexual relationships that they expect to last a long time. They decided to test this hypothesis with heterosexual relationships that differed in three key ways: the time horizon of the relationship, the level of investment in the skills of pleasing a partner, and the sexual exclusivity in the relationship. With these criteria, they studied three different ‘levels’ of a relationship: married couples, couples that lived together, and individual who do not live with their partner. They believed that married couples were the most committed, long term and exclusive couples.

            They had the couples answer questions about the intimacy of their relationship. To make it clear that they were discussing their sex lives, the researchers started by saying, “I would like to ask you how sex with your partner makes you feel.” They than had the participants rate how physical pleasing they found their partner and how emotionally satisfying they found their partner. They also recorded the number of times in the past month that the respondents had sex with his or her partner and the frequency of orgasms for both partners.

            The results showed that both men and women had more emotional satisfaction in marriage. However, only females experienced more physical pleasure in long term, committed relationships. The study concluded that this was because couples who are more committed to each other have higher levels of trust, resulting in more communication with each other. This could leave to more communication about what each person wants from their sex lives.