Associations between Conflict Negotiation Strategies, Sexual Comfort, and Sexual Satisfaction in Adolescent Romantic Relationships

ABSTRACT

Achieving healthy and satisfying sexual relationships is a major developmental task in adolescence, but factors promoting sexual satisfaction among adolescent romantic relationships remain underexplored. Since sexuality is shaped by relational experiences, strategies mobilized to negotiate conflicts in romantic relationships could be related to sexual satisfaction through comfort in negotiating sexual experiences. Sexual comfort refers to the ease of discussing sexuality, and feeling comfortable with one’s own sexual life and with others’ sexual behaviors. This cross-sectional dyadic study examined the mediating role of sexual comfort in the associations between perceived conflict negotiation strategies and sexual satisfaction among adolescent romantic dyads. The actor-partner interdependence model guided the analyses of self-reported questionnaires from 104 mixed- and same-sex dyads (M_age = 18.99 years, SD = 1.51). An adolescent’s higher compromise and lower submission were related to their own higher sexual satisfaction via their own higher sexual comfort. The results also revealed a direct association between an adolescent’s higher domination and their own lower sexual satisfaction. These findings underscore the importance of considering conflict negotiation strategies and sexual comfort as key factors related to adolescents’ sexual satisfaction.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the adolescents who participated in this project.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, M.F., upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research under Grant #103944; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council under Grant #435-2013-1683; and by a doctoral research scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Fonds de recherche du Québec–Société et Culture awarded to S. Couture.