Sex-specific need fulfillment in relationships and sexual and relationship well-being
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Sexual activity can provide important opportunities for fulfilling experiences that contribute to greater relationship satisfaction and overall well-being, yet young adults are reporting fewer partnered sexual interactions. According to self-determination theory, when people perceive their needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are met in relationships, they report greater relationship and sexual well-being, whereas need frustration contributes to relationship dysfunction and dissatisfaction. In the current cross-sectional study, we extend these ideas to a sexual context. We hypothesized that sex-specific need satisfaction would be associated with higher sexual desire, sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction and lower sexual distress beyond that of general need satisfaction within one’s relationship. We expected opposite associations for sex-specific need frustration. Partnered individuals aged 18–29 ( N = 197) completed online measures of sexual and relationship need satisfaction and frustration, sexual desire, sexual and relationship satisfaction, and sexual distress. Controlling for need satisfaction within the relationship, which was associated with higher desire and satisfaction, multivariate regression analyses indicated that sex-specific need satisfaction was associated with higher sexual desire, higher sexual and relationship satisfaction, and lower sexual distress. Furthermore, sex-specific need frustration was associated with higher sexual distress. While need satisfaction in one’s relationship and sex life may have benefits for sexual desire and sexual and relationship satisfaction, promoting need satisfaction and minimizing need frustration specific to sex may be helpful in minimizing sexual distress. Implications for researchers and clinicians highlight the importance of distinguishing between psychological need satisfaction (and frustration) across different relational contexts.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".