Sexual disagreements have a stronger association with women contemplating ending relationships than men, challenging traditional beliefs about sexual harmony's role in relationship stability, according to new research.

Sexual disagreements in relationships are more strongly associated with women considering ending their relationships than men, according to a new study published in the Journal of Sex Research. This finding, emerging from an analysis of thousands of participants, challenges traditional notions about the impact of sexual harmony on relationship stability.

The study was spurred by a gap in existing research, which primarily focused on the link between sexual satisfaction and relationship stability but seldom delved into how sexual disagreements might lead to instability. Surprisingly, despite the common occurrence of sexual conflicts and their association with reduced relationship satisfaction, this aspect has received little attention.

“Based on traditional gender ideologies, we would expect that sexual disagreements are associated with relationship instability more strongly among men than among women,” said study author Dominika Perdoch Sladká, a researcher and a PhD student at the Department of Sociology at Masaryk University.

  • @[email protected]English
    17•6 months ago

    I wondered how this compares to the rate of just general relationship dissolution. Which gender ends relationships overall more frequently?

    • @PapancaEnglish
      6•6 months ago

      I seem to recall a study, years ago, which found that women are way more often filing for divorce.

      • @[email protected]English
        5•6 months ago

        I commonly see the figure of 80%. But I don’t have sources for that.

        I think ending relationship, and initiating a divorce, while thematically similar are very different decision processes. I would love to see data for both…

        But this article is using the weasel word consider, so thinking about it is not the same as doing it…

        • @PapancaEnglish
          2•6 months ago

          Yes, very true

  • @glimse
    11•6 months ago

    Men are just happy to be there

  • Ephera
    5•6 months ago

    Hmm, my intuition is that the causation is actually the other way around. That couples with other conflicts will lose sexual attraction for each other and then also develop sexual disagreements.

    They do mention that they’ve surveyed for conflicts in other areas, but as they also mention, measurements are tricky, and I can definitely see the many micro-conflicts in a typical relationship to fall between the cracks of a survey.

    In particular, I could also imagine that sexual attraction falls off a cliff for the feminine role, because sex traditionally means children. And children in a crumbling relationship means they might be left caring for those children alone.
    That would be a hard-sell for me, too, to be horny then.