New research sheds light on how couples’ sexual passion styles interact to predict their levels of sexual satisfaction. The findings indicate that overcontrolling one’s passion tends to have a strong negative effect on sexual satisfaction for both partners. The study was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
The sexual relationship is one of the primary contributors to the quality of a romantic relationship. Understanding this relationship is often what distinguishes couples that flourish from those who struggle. Previous research has identified the concept of sexual passion as an element that is strongly associated with whether the relationship will work out and how satisfied partners will be with it. To understand the relevance of sexual passion for a relationship, it is important to consider sexual passion characteristics of both partners.
A new concept, based on the psychological self-determination theory, defines passion in general as “an activity, interest, or relationship into which individuals invest considerable time and sustained effort until eventually the passion becomes integral to an individual’s identity.” Passion can be motivated intrinsically, by a person’s own desires and balanced with the rest of individual’s life and identity, or extrinsically, when the source of motivation for the passion comes from outside of individual.
Sources of extrinsic motivation, in the case of sexual passion, can be, for example, expectations of the society about sexuality, the desire to be appreciated by others or to gain their approval.
The study conducted by Dean M. Busby and his colleagues focused on two forms of extrinsically motivated sexual passion – obsessive and inhibited.
“In several previous studies we conducted with sexual passion measures, we found that the couple style where the male had an obsessive sexual passion style and the female had an inhibited sexual passion style was common and was problematic,” explained Busby, the Camilla E. Kimball Professor at Brigham Young University. “However, in these previous studies we did not have a chance to drill down and look at these couples more specifically with dyadic analysis. This led us to the current study.”
According to the researchers, “Obsessive sexual passion is defined as an extrinsically motivated desire to be sexual that is under-controlled so that it does not stay in harmony with other important aspects of life and causes individual and relational difficulties. Inhibited sexual passion is still a passion but by definition it is overcontrolled so that the individual is plagued by constant feelings of inhibition or hesitancy in expressing their passion.”
Participants were 725 couples recruited from Bovitz Inc. and Amazon Mechanical Turk platforms. All participants were U.S. citizens. Their average age was 39 years and the average duration of their relationship was 11.4 years. More than three quarters of participants were white and over half of them earned less than $40.000 per year. Couples were required to be in a committed relationship for at least two years.
Participants completed assessments of sexual passion for themselves and for their partner that focused on obsessive sexual passion (e.g., self: “I get so involved in my sexual interests with my partner that they consume all my time and energy”; perception of partner: “My partner gets so involved in her/his sexual interests with me that they consume all her/his time and energy.”) and inhibited sexual passion (e.g., self: “I often feel reluctant to act on sexual urges that I have for my partner”; perception of partner: “My partner often feels reluctant to act on sexual urges that she/he has for me”).
The participants also completed an assessment of sexual satisfaction (the Global Measure of Sexual Satisfaction for one part of the sample and the Golombok Rust Inventory of Sexual Satisfaction for the other).
Results showed that obsessive sexual passion interacts with inhibited sexual passion in their effects on sexual satisfaction. Sexual satisfaction of partners was reduced when men exercised little control over their sexual passion (obsessive sexual passion) and their female partner exercised too much control (inhibited sexual passion).
“Because partners in sexual relationships typically use each other as reference points to evaluate their sexuality, they cannot think of their sexual passion as an individual matter,” Busby told PsyPost. “Consequently, when one person feels or is labelled as obsessive in their sexuality the other partner is likely to have the opposite label.”
“This means that in particular when a male is considered to have a passion style that is obsessive — meaning it is difficult for him to keep his sexual interests or passion in harmony with their rest of his life and relationship — and his partner has an inhibited sexual passion style, these two types of passion reinforce each other and push each other to extremes such that their sexual relationship is much less satisfying than it could be.”
Women exercising little control of their sexual passion resulted in higher levels of sexual satisfaction, especially when their male partners exercised too much control.
“It was interesting and surprising that for females obsessive sexual passion toward their current relationship was never a negative,” Busby said. “This is likely because in general females are more likely to have an inhibited sexual passion style, so they and their partner may be likely to feel like she is a bit obsessive when in fact she is in a healthy and normal place regarding her sexual passion whenever she isn’t inhibited.”
“Even if she is actually obsessive about her sexuality with her partner, this may be a net positive situation as she and her partner evaluate the sexual relationship as more important than the typical couple, so it does not appear to have any negative effects.”
Overall, the study showed that inhibited sexual passion had a strong negative effect on sexual satisfaction of both partners. Interestingly, the researchers noted that the congruence in couple’s passion styles “was not very important except at extreme levels where it might be necessary to have one person be more inhibited to counteract the strong obsessive passion of the partner, especially when men were high on obsessive sexual passion.”
The study highlights the importance of interaction between sexual passion styles of partners for the quality of romantic relationships. However, it should be noted that the sample of the study was not representative of the U.S. population and that results may be different on a more representative sample. Additionally, the study design does not allow for any cause-and-effect conclusions.
“We do not yet know what is the effect of these sexual passion styles across time,” Busby said. “It may be that, as an example, obsessive passion has largely positive effects for women and sometimes for men, but that over time this is not the case. Also, all of the couples were in a committed relationship with a partner for at least two years, so the results may not apply for individuals and couples in different circumstances.”
“In general, an inhibited sexual passion style is quite problematic, and more so than obsessive sexual passion, but especially in the context of a relationship where the other partner is considered by one or both members of the dyad to be obsessive,” he added. “Practitioners and scholars would benefit from learning more about what leads to an inhibited sexual passion styles and what are effective interventions to reduce these inhibitions within the context of a committed relationship. However, it is likely to be most effective if interventions help both partners move toward each other into the harmonious range rather than exclusively focussing on just inhibition or obsession.”
The study, “Sexual passion in couple relationships: Emerging patterns from dyadic response surface analysis”, was authored by Dean M. Busby, Veronica Hanna-Walker, Nathan D. Leonhardt, and James J. Kim.
