Department of Psychology, Florida State University, 1107 W. Call St., Tallahassee, FL, 32306, USA.
School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD, Australia.
Arch Sex Behav. 2019 Nov;48(8):2473-2489. doi: 10.1007/s10508-019-01471-6. Epub 2019 Aug 30.
Sex is critical to marriage. Yet, there are several reasons to expect spouses to experience declines in the desire for sex over time, and the rates of any declines in sexual desire may differ for men and women. We used two multi-wave, longitudinal studies to test whether male and female members of newlywed couples experienced different rates of change in sexual desire, whether any such changes were accentuated by childbirth, and whether any such changes had implications for marital satisfaction. In both studies, spouses provided multiple reports of sexual desire, marital satisfaction, and childbirth. Results demonstrated that women's sexual desire declined more steeply over time than did men's sexual desire, which did not decline on average. Further, childbirth accentuated this sex difference by partially, though not completely, accounting for declines in women's sexual desire but not men's. Finally, declines in women's but not men's sexual desire predicted declines in both partners' marital satisfaction. These effects held controlling depressive symptoms and stress, including stress from parenthood. The current findings offer novel longitudinal evidence for sex-differentiated changes in sexual desire and therefore suggest an important source of marital discord.
性在婚姻中至关重要。然而，有几个原因可以预期配偶随着时间的推移对性的欲望会下降，而且男性和女性的任何性欲望下降的速度可能不同。我们使用了两项多波、纵向研究来检验新婚夫妇中的男性和女性成员是否经历了不同的性欲望变化率，任何此类变化是否因分娩而加剧，以及任何此类变化是否对婚姻满意度有影响。在这两项研究中，配偶多次报告性欲望、婚姻满意度和分娩情况。结果表明，女性的性欲望随时间的推移下降得比男性更陡峭，而男性的性欲望平均没有下降。此外，分娩通过部分而非完全解释了女性性欲望的下降，但没有解释男性性欲望的下降，从而加剧了这种性别差异。最后，女性性欲望的下降而不是男性性欲望的下降预测了双方婚姻满意度的下降。这些影响在控制了抑郁症状和压力，包括来自父母的压力后仍然存在。目前的研究结果为性欲望的性别差异变化提供了新的纵向证据，因此表明这是婚姻不和谐的一个重要来源。
