The Balance of Sexual Responsiveness and Autonomy: Communal and Self-Determined Approaches to Sexual Motivation, Need Fulfillment, and Support in Romantic Relationships

Abstract

Sexual need fulfillment between partners is central to the maintenance of a romantic relationship over time. However, it can be challenging to assert one’s sexual needs in the process of being responsive to a partner’s sexual needs, presenting a key interdependent dilemma couples navigate in the sexual domain. In the following dissertation, I integrated communal and self-determined theories of sexual motivation to further our understanding of how people balance being responsive to a partner’s sexual needs with asserting their own sexual needs and how perceiving a partner as supportive of one’s sexual needs is central to maintaining sexual and relationship well-being. In my first paper, I examine how balancing the motivation to be responsive to a partner’s sexual needs with asserting one’s own sexual needs (i.e., high sexual communal strength) is associated with greater sexual and relationship well-being as a function of engaging in sex for pleasure and meaning (i.e., autonomous reasons) rather than out of pressure or obligation (i.e., controlled reasons). In contrast, sexual responsiveness that involves self-neglect (i.e., high unmitigated sexual communion) is costly to well-being due to controlled reasons for engaging in sex. In my second paper, I demonstrate how experimentally orienting people in relationships to high sexual responsiveness is associated with differences in autonomous versus controlled reasons for engaging in sex and sexual and relationship well-being depending on whether people are also oriented toward high versus low sexual assertiveness. In my third and final paper, I examine the novel role of perceiving a partner as autonomously supportive in the sexual domain (i.e., feeling that a partner supports one’s ability to freely choose and act on their sexual preferences and interests) in fostering sexual need fulfillment, and in turn, sexual and relationship satisfaction, over and above the role of perceiving a partner as responsive to one’s sexual needs. By emphasizing the value of being sexually responsive and self-determined in relationships, this dissertation provides key insights into the dynamics of sexual motivation, sexual need fulfillment and support in romantic relationships, as well as the potential for applying and extending this work to diverse populations, contexts, and interventions.