Women's Sexual Satisfaction as a Predictor of Well-Being in Same-Sex Versus Mixed-Sex Relationships

Abstract

Structural equation modelling was used to assess the strengths of the links between sexual satisfaction and self-reported (a) relationship well-being, (b) mental health, and (c) physical health for women in same-sex (i.e., homosexual, n = 114) versus mixed-sex (i.e., heterosexual, n = 208) relationships. Participants came from a large-scale Internet study. Sexual satisfaction was found to be an extremely strong predictor of relational well-being, a strong predictor of mental health, and a weak to moderately strong predictor of physical health. A two-group comparison model indicated that the strength of these links was the same, regardless of whether the women were in a sexual relationship with a man or with another woman.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by funding from the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation, the Canadian Institute for Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Lesbian Health Fund of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. We thank Keith Gallant for assistance in Web site design and maintenance.

Notes

¹We generally prefer “same-sex relationship” to “lesbian,” as not all women currently in a relationship with another woman would self-identify as lesbian (Lever, 1995). We use the term “mixed-sex relationship” for grammatical comparability to “same-sex relationship” and to avoid the assumptions of strong gender differences contained in the term “opposite-sex relationship.”

Note. ISS = Index of Sexual Satisfaction; SSI = Sexual Satisfaction Inventory. Asterisks indicate groups are significantly different on those variables.

^a Factor loading set to 1.0 during initial estimation for purposes of identifying model.

*p < .005.

Note. Asterisks indicate groups are significantly different on those variables. *p < .005. **p < .001.

Note. CFI = comparative fit index; GFI = goodness-of-fit index; RMSEA = root mean square error of approximation. CFI and GFI scores above .90 and RMSEA scores below .10 indicate acceptable fit to the data (Kline, 2005).

²Specifying sexual satisfaction as the predictor variable was primarily a matter of convenience, as it permits the assessment of separate R ² values (i.e., measures of effect size) for each of the three well-being measures. One could, of course, just as easily reverse the paths in Figure 1 and specify the three well-being variables as predictors and sexual satisfaction as the criterion variable. If one does so, the fit statistics for the individual models shown in Table 3 remain identical. The three well-being variables together account for 48% of the variance in sexual satisfaction for women in mixed-sex relationships and 31% of the variance for women in same-sex relationships.

Note. Correlations for women in same-sex relationships appear above the diagonal; correlations for women in mixed-sex relationships appear below the diagonal. ISS = Index of Sexual Satisfaction; SSI = Sexual Satisfaction Inventory.

*p < .005. **p < .001.