Childhood maltreatment, sexual desire and sexual distress in couples: the role of touch aversion
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Childhood maltreatment (CM), experienced by about 40 % of adults, is associated with romantic relationship challenges like instability, sexual dissatisfaction, and dysfunction. While CM has been linked to lower sexual desire and higher distress, its impact within couples and underlying mechanisms remain underexplored. Touch aversion, where partner touch feels unpleasant, may explain how CM relates to lower sexual desire and higher sexual distress. OBJECTIVE: This study explores the mediating role of touch aversion in the associations between CM, sexual desire and sexual distress in couples. METHODS: A sample of 363 adult couples completed self-reported online questionnaires on CM, partner-focused sexual desire, sexual distress and touch aversion. RESULTS: A person's CM is indirectly associated with their own lower sexual desire (b = - 0.07, 95 % bootstrap CI = [-0.08, -0.02]), their partner's higher sexual desire (b = 0.01, 95 % bootstrap CI = [0.000, 0.02]), and both their own (b = 0.06, 95 % bootstrap CI = [0.01, 0.03]) and their partner's higher sexual distress (b = 0.02, 95 % bootstrap CI = [0.003, 0.013]) through their own higher touch aversion. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide theoretical support for the role of touch aversion in the sexual dynamics of couples reporting CM, underscoring the interdependent nature of partners' sexual desire and distress. Clinically, understanding how individuals with a CM history respond to touch may highlight a modifiable psychological process that could help couples navigate their sexual desire and distress.
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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 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 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".