Keeping the spark in your marriage or any other physically intimate relationship can be a daunting challenge. However, a recent study offers strong evidence that partners who are responsive to each other outside the bedroom have a higher likelihood of maintaining the passion in their sex lives.
A co-author on the study is Gurit Birnbaum, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, a nonprofit research university in Israel. Of the study’s findings, she says, “Responsiveness — which is a type of intimacy — is so important in a relationship because it signals that one is really concerned with the welfare of the other, but in a way that is truly open and informed about what the other cares about and wants.”
‘Being Nice’ Isn’t Enough
Birnbaum went on to say that simply “being nice” and similar genetically benign behavior usually aren’t based on who the partner is and what the partner really wants. “When a mate is truly responsive, the relationship feels special and unique and he or she is perceived as valued and desirable,” she said. “Sexual desire thrives on increasing intimacy, and being responsive is one of the best ways to
instill this elusive sensation over time, better than any pyrotechnic sex.”
Birnbaum’s fellow researchers include two others from IDC Herzliya, as well as one researcher each from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Cornell Tech and the University of Rochester in the United States. Birnbaum’s co-author on the study is Harry T. Reis, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. While their study’s findings indicate that women’s desire is more closely linked to their partner’s responsiveness, men also report an increase in desire when their partner is responsive.
At the heart of the most recent study, which has been previewed online in advance of publication in the “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,” was an effort to closely explore the so-called intimacy-desire paradox and test its validity. That paradox holds that high levels of physical intimacy between a couple may over time reduce their sexual desire for one another.
While frequently discussed in theoretical terms, the intimacy-desire paradox has not been widely studied to determine how accurately it predicts actual human sexual behavior. Birnbaum and her fellow researchers found that at least under some circumstances the paradox may not apply at all.
Responsiveness Fuels Desire
They found that the nature and significance of the physical intimacy, rather than its mere existence, is the deciding factor in whether that intimacy promotes or inhibits further intimacy within the context of a specific relationship. They found that responsiveness generally fuels sexual desire because “it conveys the impression that the partner is worth pursuing and thus engaging in sex with such a desirable partner is likely to promote an already valuable relationship,” according to a University of Rochester press release.
The research team led by Birnbaum and Reis conducted three separate experiments designed to test three theories the researchers had formulated about the association between responsiveness and sexual desire. Those theories are as follows:
1. Partner responsiveness would be closely associated with increased desire.
2. Feeling special and perceiving that one’s partner has high mate value would explain the responsiveness-desire link, such that responsive partners would enhance participants’ feeling valued and would be seen as better mates and as more sexually desirable.
3. Responsiveness would have a stronger impact on women’s perceptions of both self and partner and desire than on men’s perceptions and desire.
First Experiment
The first of the researchers’ three experiments was designed to determine whether a causal link existed between a partner’s responsiveness and the desire to engage in sex with this partner. Using flyers and word of mouth, the team recruited 153 heterosexual Israeli couples, all of whom had been together in a monogamous relationship for at least four months. Ages of the participants ranged from 20 to 42 among the women and 20 to 43 among the men.
The partners were separated but told that they would be interacting with each other via an online messaging service. One partner from each couple was selected to be the discloser, tasked with relating to his or her partner via the messaging service a recent life event that was personally meaningful in either a positive or a negative way.
Responsive or Unresponsive
In fact, researchers paired each of these disclosing partners with a confederate who was instructed to respond online in either a responsive or unresponsive way. For example, if the disclosing partner said that his maternal aunt had recently experienced a nervous breakdown, the confederate might reply, in responsive fashion, that this must have been a very painful event indeed. Alternatively, the confederate could supply an unresponsive reply by saying, “That doesn’t sound so bad to me.”
After this first phase of the experiment, disclosing partners were asked to fill out a questionnaire designed to gauge their desire for their partners based on perceived responsiveness during the test. Their answers clearly indicated that those who believed their partners had dealt with their problems in responsive fashion were far more likely to have feelings of desire for those partners.
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For the second experiment, researchers recruited 178 heterosexual Israeli couples who’d been in a monogamous relationship with each other for at least four months. The participants were instructed to discuss a personal life event face-to-face with their partners and were also invited to express physical intimacy with each other. These interactive sessions were videotaped and later scrutinized by a panel of independent judges for displays of responsiveness and desire. Once again, researchers observed a close link, particularly noticeable in women, between perceived partner responsiveness and both self-reported and displayed signs of desire.
Third Experiment
For the third and final experiment, 100 heterosexual Israeli couples were recruited and asked to maintain personal diaries for six weeks. Each day, partners were asked to report their own level of sexual desire along with their perceptions of how responsive their partners were to them. The results from this test once again indicated that perceiving a partner to be responsive makes one feel more special. It also increases the perceived value and sexual desirability of that partner.
In the conclusion to their overall study, researchers note that daily expressions of responsiveness “facilitate” sexual desire in both men and women involved in long-term relationships. This is particularly true, they note, when these responsiveness cues communicate to each partner “that the partner is valuable and that the relationship is special.”
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