Does sex predict marital disruption?
Now I know what you must be thinking. Surely scientists do not need to study this question. We all know the answer without even bothering with some lame scientific study. Or surely this was settled scientifically a long time ago, right?
Well it is always a bit more interesting and complicated. That's what make behavioral and social science fun. We can put our common sense to the test. Kristina Dzara at Southern Illinois University starts by telling us that scientists "know little about the sex that people have while married with their spouse and how it may influence marital disruption," she writes in her article, Assessing the Effect of Marital Sexuality on Marital Disruption.
To examine role of sex in marriage, Dzara used the Marriage Matters Panel Survey of Newly Wed Couples that followed over 1000 couples in Louisiana from 1998 to 2004. The average age of the wives in this study was 28 and the average age for men was 30 years.
The author used three measures of sexuality in the first three to six months of marriage -- frequency of sexual intercourse, sexual satisfaction, and agreement between spouses about their sex life. Dzara used these measures to predict divorce by the 5th year of marriage. As we know, there are a lot of factors can contribute to divorce -- marital quality, early marriage, cohabitation and many more. In order to get a better understanding of the effects of sexuality in marriage, the author controlled for many of these other factors.
So, first, does frequency of sexual intercourse matter in terms of couples staying together? No, say these findings. On average these young couples had intercourse between one and several times a week, but frequency didn't seem to matter.
What about satisfaction with sex and physical intimacy? The author tests this effect for both husbands and wives. For wives, satisfaction with physical intimacy decreased the likelihood of divorce, but overall marital quality and satisfaction with intimacy appeared to have the same effect. In other words, marital quality and satisfaction with sex could not be teased apart for wives.
So what about the effect of husband's sexual satisfaction and the prospects of divorce? The probability of divorce is dramatically reduced when husband's report being sexually satisfied. Dzara writes, "a couple with a husband who has the highest self-rated satisfaction with physical intimacy, compared to a husband with the lowest self-rated satisfaction with physical intimacy, decreases their odds of experiencing a marital disruption by around 83.7%." Overall, husbands' satisfaction with physical intimacy is a stronger influence on divorce than any other measure in this study.
Somewhat surprisingly, agreement between husbands and wives about their sex life did not seem to have much influence on their likelihood of divorce. "Agreement about one's sex life" may be bound up with many other factors of agreement.
In short, sex seems to matter to healthy marriages -- not too big of a surprise. For wives, satisfaction with physical intimacy and marital satisfaction seem to be rolled into one overall factor. Not so for men. When men report being satisfied with their marriage, this reduces their likelihood for divorce, and if they also report being sexually satisfied, then divorce is even more unlikely. The author of this study notes the limitations of this study -- the couples in the study were generally younger and from only one state, so they may not be representative of the United States as a whole. Nevertheless, these seems like important findings to consider.
Solid Communication between couples builds Trust, Understanding, Respect, etc.!
When you can talk to your partner honestly and openly without fear of guilt, shame or embarrassment, especially when it comes to your sex life then you will have a strong, solid foundation in which to build your lives together.
My best advice is to not get married young! Enjoy your youth, explore the world, grow as a person and figure out what you truely want and who you truely are before you make a lifelong commitment to marriage.
Once married its pretty simple, talk to each other honestly and openly about what you want in the sack. Men are easy to please with good sex and some affection and women are slightly more complicated as they need to communicate with good eye contact and know you are LISTENING and FEELING their thoughts and emotions. They also need to feel affection and loved, good sex is a bonus!
By-the-way, is anyone aware of how a dictionary is compiled and definitions are decided on? You might want to find out if you don't. And, did you know that just because someone with a few abbreviations following their name describing their areas of study said or wrote something does not guarantee it to be correct or true? It could be true but it's not an automatic guarantee. To know whether it is or not, you have to do some unbiased work of your own and you may even have to be rational minded and use sound logic. If you're strongly inclined toward relativism or legalism it's very likely that you can't understand the things I say. It shows in the comments some of you make about some of my posts. Be careful about looking those words up in the dictionary. The definitions could just be the most popular misunderstandings of what they mean.
The social scientists who discovered this are masters of the the obvious.
Exactly.
But, yes, good sex makes the relationship better.
I am now in a 6 year relationship and we often check in with each other on many levels, including sex. He was starting to get lazy about the seduction part, and both of us were frustrated with quantity. I finally got him to realize that, no matter how tired I say I am, I can ALWAYS get on board if he just ASKS the right way. Long wet forceful kisses, and zoom! That's all it takes.
With "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to", couples should hone and experience the best possible sex and often.