Dyadic Profiles of Sexual Satisfaction among Chinese Newlywed Couples over Time

ABSTRACT

Although sexual satisfaction is a defining feature of marriage, research has consistently found that sexual satisfaction declines over time. Recently, however, emerging findings provide a more optimistic perspective on sexual satisfaction development by suggesting that couples may follow diverse sexual satisfaction trajectories. Using Dyadic Latent Class Growth Analysis, the current study is among the first to examine heterogeneity in couples’ sexual satisfaction trajectory patterns during the early years of marriage and the first to do so in a non-Western context. Specifically, we establish distinct trajectory classes among 268 mixed-sex newlywed couples in China based on two couple-level features – the absolute level of sexual satisfaction and synchrony over time – and then compare these classes on subsequent ratings of marital instability. Four distinct trajectory patterns were found: a stable high class, a wives low and simultaneous deterioration class, a husbands low decrease-wives high stable class, and a wives high decrease-husbands high stable class. Couples in the stable high class reported lower levels of marital instability at two-year follow-up compared to couples in the other classes, suggesting that high sexual satisfaction and synchrony is beneficial for couples’ marital relationships. These results provide further evidence challenging the inevitability of sexual satisfaction declines and have important implications for interventions aiming to enhance couples’ sexual relationship.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The pattern of results was identical when controlling only for marital length and Time 1 marital instability.

² Given that couples had been in their relationships for varying lengths of time at baseline, we conducted multivariate analysis of variances (MANOVA) and Bonferroni post-hoc pair-wise comparisons to examine differences in relationship length (marital length, cohabitation length, engagement length) between trajectory classes. Results from MANOVAs indicated that trajectory classes were only distinguished by marital length, F (3, 262) = 2.81, p = .04. However, no significant differences emerged in pair-wise comparisons, indicating that it is not the case that unsatisfied couples were those in longer relationships while satisfied couples were those in relatively shorter relationships.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant [31971017 and 31571157].