If getting down has well and truly fallen to the bottom of your priorities list but your partner is still making a bid for connection, it might be time to meet them halfway.
There are many factors that go into creating a strong and happy relationship: communication, trust, kindness and, yes, sex. But it’s not necessarily a willingness to swing from the chandeliers three times a night that brings a couple closer. A new study has found that it’s sexual responsiveness that plays a significant role in relationship quality and satisfaction.
What is sexual responsiveness? The study, published in Current Opinion in Psychology, defined it as “understanding, accommodating, and being willing or motivated to meet a partner’s sexual desires.”
Who doesn’t want a partner like that?
The authors of the study found that when two people support one another by being responsive to one another’s wants and needs in the bedroom – which they call “high sexual communal strength”, it’s associated with higher sexual desire and satisfaction and, even better, higher satisfaction with the relationship overall.
Couples therapist and sexologist Isiah McKimmie says that sex offers a unique way for couples to connect in their relationship.
“For many people, sex is an important way of feeling loved and connected,” she says. “It signifies an intimacy that most couples don’t have with other people.
“Couple relationships are strengthened when partners respond to each other’s ‘bids for connection’. Touch and sexual initiation are ways that one partner makes a bid for connection.”
The concept of sexual responsiveness leading to increased intimacy and satisfaction sounds good, but what does that look like in a practical sense?
McKimmie says it’s all about being willing to respond to your partner’s sexual desires and needs.
“It might look like engaging when your partner initiates sex, making an effort to make sex a priority, or being open to your partner’s sexual interests,” she says.
The more different your partner’s needs and interests are from your own, the stronger the benefits, according to the study.
And, for those dealing with sexual issues or past traumas, the study found that the satisfaction level is even higher when a partner is responsive while taking these special circumstances into account.
This is because it takes even more vulnerability and reassurances of safety, suggests McKimmie.
“I would imagine [the higher satisfaction rate] is because those who have experienced past trauma often need to feel safe and that their partner is responsive to them in order to be vulnerable sexually,” she says. “Sexual responsiveness and understanding go both ways.”
But if either partner feels like they have to neglect their own needs for those of the other, the study found that’s when the benefits disappear.
As the study authors write, “Being a sexually responsive partner does not mean meeting a partner’s sexual needs unequivocally but instead involves aiming to understand and be open to a partner’s sexual interests while still asserting your own needs and boundaries.”
The authors even found that, when being sexually responsive involves neglecting your own wants and needs, including having sex when you don’t want to, it’s associated with lower desire and satisfaction – and can lead to sexual distress.
If you’re ready to start seeing that higher satisfaction in your own relationship, you can start by opening the lines of communication.
“One of the most important aspects of couples having a satisfying sex life is being able to talk about sex openly and honestly,” says McKimmie. “It can help for couples to talk about sex together, share what their sexual interests are, what their sexual brakes and accelerators might be, and to create ‘rituals’ of how they initiate sex and turn each other down”.
Being willing to listen and accommodate each other’s needs can provide a solid foundation for couples to build trust and understanding outside the bedroom. When you add two satisfied sexual customers to the mix, that’s an unbeatable combination.