Responsiveness in the Face of Sexual Challenges: The Role of Sexual Growth and Destiny Beliefs

ABSTRACT

Implicit––or lay––sexual beliefs have been associated with how people respond to sexual challenges in romantic relationships. People who endorse sexual destiny beliefs view a satisfying sex life as the result of finding the right partner and report poorer sexual, relationship, and personal well-being when there are sexual challenges. In comparison, people who endorse sexual growth beliefs view satisfying sexual relationships as requiring hard work and effort to maintain and tend to report high sexual, relationship, and personal well-being even when facing sexual challenges. High sexual responsiveness – being motivated to meet a partner’s sexual needs – is associated with maintaining high sexual satisfaction, even when couples face sexual challenges in a relationship. In the current research, we tested whether sexual growth and destiny beliefs are associated with general and sexual responsiveness and whether the associations are moderated by the presence of sexual challenges. Across three (clinical and non-clinical) samples (N = 820) facing different types of sexual challenges (Study 1 (M_age = 31.64, SD = 8.53), clinically low sexual desire; Studies 2 (M_age = 32.63, SD = 10.19) and 3 (M_age = 32.40, SD = 9.31), unmet sexual ideals; Study 3, changes in sex since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic), we found that sexual growth beliefs were associated with higher sexual responsiveness and perceived partner sexual and general responsiveness, even when couples were coping with sexual challenges, whereas sexual destiny beliefs were not associated with responsiveness, and at times were associated with lower sexual responsiveness and perceived partner sexual and general responsiveness. This research provides initial evidence about how implicit sexual beliefs are associated with sexual and general responsiveness when couples are coping with sexual challenges in a romantic relationship.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight (SSHRC) and Insight Development Grants awarded to Amy Muise, a SSHRC Doctoral Joseph-Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship awarded to Stephanie Raposo, and a Canadian Institute of Health Research New Investigator Grant to Natalie O. Rosen.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2023.2175194

Notes

¹ We preregistered sexual goals as an additional outcome, but focus on responsiveness for the current paper (see supplement for details).

² We preregistered sexual goals as additional outcomes in Studies 1 and 2, but we will only focus on responsiveness in this paper. We also preregistered sexual distress as an additional moderator. See our supplement for more information.

³ We preregistered sexual goals as additional outcomes in Studies 1 and 2, but we will only focus on responsiveness in this paper. See our supplement for more information.

⁴ We also preregistered sexual distress as an additional moderator. See our supplement for more information.

⁵ We used a truncated measure of perceived partner responsiveness because in another study researchers compared the single item that we used in Study 2 to the more comprehensive measure of sexual communal strength, and they found that these two measures were highly positively correlated (r = .67, p < .001) and loaded onto the same construct and were associated with other relationship, sexual variables in similar ways (Raposo & Muise, 2021).

⁶ We also preregistered sexual distress as an additional moderator. See our supplement for more information.

⁷ Past research and our current research on sexual responsiveness and clinical sexual issues has mainly focused on women’s sexual issues (i.e., vulvodynia, FSIAD) and as such cannot be generalizable to men’s sexual issues (i.e., erectile dysfunction)