Marital Sex

The majority of modern North American couples expect that sexual activity will be pleasurable, and research indicates that most are in fact satisfied with the sexual aspects of their relationship. In a national survey of over 650 married couples, approximately one-third of the husbands and wives reported a "very great deal" of sexual satisfaction, and an additional one-third reported "a great deal" of satisfaction (Greeley 1991). Similarly, the majority (over 80 percent) of married or cohabiting respondents in Laumann and colleagues' (1994) study stated that they were "extremely" or "very" physically and emotionally satisfied by sexual activity with their partner.

Sexual satisfaction is associated with a variety of factors. One of these is sexual frequency. Specifically, couples who have more frequent sex report higher levels of sexual satisfaction than couples who have less frequent sex (Young et al. 1998). The experience of orgasm also is correlated with sexual satisfaction (Perlman and Abramson 1982; Pinney, Gerrard, and Denney 1987; Young et al. 1998). For example, women who experience orgasms before or at the same time as their partner report higher levels of sexual satisfaction than women who have orgasms after their partners do (Darling, Davidson, and Cox 1991). Another predictor of a married couple's degree of sexual satisfaction is the ratio of sexual rewards (aspects of the sexual relationship that are pleasing or gratifying) to sexual costs (aspects of the sexual relationship that require physical or mental effort or that produce pain, anxiety, or embarrassment) that each partner receives from the relationship (Lawrance and Byers 1995). Marital sexual satisfaction generally is greatest when sexual rewards are high, sexual costs are low, sexual rewards exceed sexual costs, the obtained sexual rewards and costs in the relationship compare favorably to the expected sexual rewards and costs, and one partner's sexual rewards and costs do not greatly exceed the other's.