New research provides evidence that love and desire are both important factors in predicting whether partners engage in sexual activity. The longitudinal study has been published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.
“Low sexual desire is one of the most commonly reported sexual problems and also one of the most difficult to treat in couples and sex therapy,” said study author Laura Vowels, a relationship therapist at Re-Connect EFT Clinic in London and PhD researcher at University of Southampton.
“Esther Perel suggests that love and desire are inherently incompatible but some studies have found that especially women tend to see love and desire as linked. We wanted to test whether both love and desire would be associated with having and enjoying sex or whether only desire would matter.”
In the study, 90 heterosexual couples independently completed online surveys every morning over the course of 30 days. The surveys asked the participants how much they agreed with statements such as “During the past day, did you feel sexual desire for your partner” and “During the past day, did you feel love for your partner?”
The participants had been in a relationship together for a minimum of 2.58 years and a maximum of 31 years.
“Both love and desire can impact engagement in sexual activity and how much someone enjoys sex. On days when love and/or desire toward partner are higher, partners are more likely to have sex and also more likely to enjoy the sexual experience. Higher level of sexual desire is likely to have more of an effect compared to love,” Vowels told PsyPost.
Male and female participants had a similar pattern of results. However, love became non-significant as a predictor for quality of sexual experience for men (but remained significant for women) after controlling for the effect of relationship satisfaction.
“It is important to note that this is only one study and further research is needed on the topic. For example, we only asked one question on love and one on desire. It is possible that different aspects of love (e.g., passionate vs. companionate love) are interpreted differently by participants,” Vowels explained.
“For example, some researchers use passionate love and sexual desire synonymously but some use them as separate constructs. Because we used single items for love and desire, participants may have used different definitions for each variable.”
“The research needs to be replicated using better questionnaires in the future. Also, the study, while longitudinal, is not experimental so we cannot be certain about the causal direction. For example, it may be that having/enjoying sex is likely to increase feeling of desire and love too,” Vowels added.
The study, “Partners’ Daily Love and Desire as Predictors of Engagement in and Enjoyment of Sexual Activity“, was authored by Laura M. Vowels and Kristen P. Mark.