Open Collections

Goldberg, Simone

University of British Columbia

Sexual well-being (i.e., high sexual satisfaction, high sexual desire, and low distress) is an important contributor to mental, physical, and relational well-being. Yet, a large proportion of individuals in long-term relationships report problems with their sexual well-being, including feeling sexually dissatisfied, experiencing low sexual desire, or feeling worried or concerned about their sex life. Cross-sectional and experimental research find that mindfulness—present moment awareness without judgment—is associated with higher sexual well-being. However, most research has focused on trait mindfulness rather than sexual mindfulness—mindfulness during sex—despite evidence that sexual mindfulness predicts sexual well-being over and above trait mindfulness. Research is further limited in that few studies have accounted for the interpersonal context of sex, sampling individuals, rather than couples, and no studies have employed a daily experience design to capture fluctuations in sexual mindfulness across sexual encounters. The current study addressed these critical gaps by examining associations between daily sexual mindfulness and sexual well-being in a community sample (N = 297 couples) over a 35-day daily-diary study. We found that on days when individuals were more sexually mindful (compared to their own average across all days), both they and their partners reported higher sexual satisfaction, higher sexual desire, and lower sexual distress. For the first time, we found that daily fluctuations in sexual mindfulness are associated with individuals' own and their partner's sexual well-being. Findings from this research add to the growing body of literature supporting sexual mindfulness as a factor associated with intra- and interpersonal benefits for sexual well-being in couples.

Text

2024-08-28

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89062

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/