The Burden of Sexual Problems: Perceived Effects on Men’s and Women’s Sexual Partners

Abstract

Sexual dysfunction sometimes negatively affects the individual, his or her partner, and the relationship. We investigated the relationship between the distress experienced by men and women with orgasmic phase difficulties and the perceived distress of their partner(s). We also identified predictors of perceived partner distress, and related self and partner distress to severity of the problem and relationship quality. Data were drawn from 374 men with premature ejaculation (PE) and 377 women with anorgasmia who responded to a survey regarding their sexual functioning, including their distress about their condition and the perceived distress of their partners. Results yielded an overall distress score consisting of combined self and perceived partners distress, with women showing a higher overall score and higher perceived partner distress than men. For men, significant predictors of perceived partner distress included self-distress, relationship quality, interest in sex, and arousal difficulty; for women, only the level of self-distress significantly predicted perceived partner distress. These findings indicate the burden of experiencing sexual difficulty, identify factors related to perceived partner distress, and demonstrate differences in self versus partner distress across men and women. Overall, such findings reiterate the strong need for the inclusion of the partner in any attempted remediation of a sexual problem.

Notes

¹ We refer to this group initially as the “PE symptom group” because they show signs of having symptoms of PE, including ejaculating before desired (wording borrowed from DSM-5, American Psychiatric Association, 2013), but were not formally diagnosed as having PE. However, to simplify, this group is referred to as the “PE group” in the remainder of the text.

² We refer to this group initially as the “FOD symptom group” because although these women show signs of having symptoms of female orgasmic disorder, they were not formally diagnosed as such. However, to simplify, this group is referred to as the “FOD group” in the remainder of the text.

³ ELT is preferred to IELT (intravaginal ejaculatory latency time) as a more inclusive term that encompasses different penetrative possibilities, that is, beyond just vaginal.

⁴ Previous research on these dysfunctional men and women has shown that both groups rated their sexual relationship lower than comparison groups of functional men and women. However, these dysfunctional men and women did not rate their overall relationship lower than functional men and women (Rowland & Kolba, 2015, 2016).

⁵ We found no research literature dealing with partner interactions in women’s sexual problems related to orgasm, although a limited number of studies have addressed partner interactions related to female genital pain, sexual desire, and arousal (see Hendrickx et al., 2016; Rosen et al., 2014).