Sex presumably facilitates pair bonding, but how do partners remain pair-bonded between sexual acts? Evolutionary perspectives suggest that sexual afterglow serves this purpose. We explored how long sexual satisfaction would remain elevated following sex and predicted that stronger sexual afterglow would characterize more satisfying partnerships. We pooled the data from two independent, longitudinal studies of newlywed couples to examine these issues. Spouses reported their daily sexual activity and sexual satisfaction for 14 days and their marital satisfaction at baseline and 4 or 6 months later. Results demonstrated that sexual satisfaction remained elevated approximately 48 hr after sex, and spouses experiencing a stronger afterglow reported higher levels of marital satisfaction both at baseline and over time. We interpret these findings as evidence that sexual afterglow is a proximal cognitive mechanism through which sex promotes pair bonding.
AlexanderR. D.NoonanK. M. (1979). Concealment of ovulation, parental care, and human social evolution. In ChagnonN. A.IronsW. (Eds.), Evolutionary biology and human social behavior: An anthropological perspective (pp. 402–435). North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press.
2.
BartelsA.ZekiS. (2000). The neural basis of romantic love. NeuroReport, 11, 3829–3834.
3.
BaumeisterR. F.BratslavskyE. (1999). Passion, intimacy, and time: Passionate love as a function of change in intimacy. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 49–67.
4.
BirnbaumG. E.FinkelE. J. (2015). The magnetism that holds us together: Sexuality and relationship maintenance across relationship development. Current Opinion in Psychology, 1, 29–33.
5.
BrennanK. A.ClarkC. L.ShaverP. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment: An integrative overview. In SimpsonJ. A.RholesW. S. (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 394–428). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
6.
BrodyS.CostaR. M. (2009). Satisfaction (sexual, life, relationship, and mental health) is associated directly with penile-vaginal intercourse, but inversely with other sexual behavior frequencies. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 6, 1947–1954.
7.
BussD. M.SchmittD. P. (1993). Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating. Psychological Review, 100, 204–232.
8.
CallV.SprecherS.SchwartzP. (1995). The incidence and frequency of marital sex in a national sample. Journal of Marriage and Family, 57, 639–652.
9.
CarlsenE.PetersenJ. H.AnderssonA. M.SkakkebaekN. E. (2004). Effects of ejaculatory frequency and season on variations in semen quality. Fertility and Sterility, 82, 358–366.
10.
CarmichaelM. S.HumbertR.DixenJ.PalmisanoG.GreenleafW.DavidsonJ. M. (1987). Plasma oxytocin increases in the human sexual response. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 64, 27–31.
11.
DalyM. (1978). The cost of mating. The American Naturalist, 112, 771–774.
12.
FinkelE. J.EastwickP. W.ReisH. T. (2015). Best research practices in psychology: Illustrating epistemological and pragmatic considerations with the case of relationship science. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108, 275–297.
13.
FloraJ.SegrinC. (2000). Affect and behavioral involvement in spousal complaints and compliments. Journal of Family Psychology, 14, 641–657.
14.
GallupG. G.BurchR. L.ZappieriM. L.ParvezR. A.StockwellM. L.DavisJ. A. (2003). The human penis as a semen displacement device. Evolution & Human Behavior, 24, 277–289.
15.
GoldbergL. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public-domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. In MervieldeI.DearyI. J.De FruytF.OstendorfF. (Eds.), Personality psychology in Europe (Vol. 7, pp. 7–28). Tilburg, The Netherlands: Tilburg University Press.
16.
HicksL. L.McNultyJ. K.MeltzerA. L.OlsonM. A. (2016). Capturing the interpersonal implications of evolved preferences? Frequency of sex shapes automatic, but not explicit, partner evaluations. Psychological Science, 27, 836–847.
17.
JacobsonN. S.MooreD. (1981). Spouses as observers of the events in their relationship. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 49, 269–277.
18.
LehtonenJ.JennionsM. D.KokkoH. (2012). The many costs of sex. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 27, 172–178.
19.
LevinR. J. (2009). Revisiting post-ejaculation refractory time—what we know and what we do not know in males and in females. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 6, 2376–2389.
20.
LoewensteinG.KrishnamurtiT.KopsicJ.McDonaldD. (2015). Does increased sexual frequency enhance happiness?Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 116, 206–218.
21.
LuchiesL. B.FinkelE. J.McNultyJ. K.KumashiroM. (2010). The doormat effect: When forgiving erodes self-respect and self-concept clarity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 734–749.
22.
ManerJ. K.DeWallC. N.BaumeisterR. F.SchallerM. (2007). Does social exclusion motivate interpersonal reconnection? Resolving the “porcupine problem.”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 42–55.
23.
McNultyJ. K. (2008). Forgiveness in marriage: Putting the benefits into context. Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 171–175.
24.
McNultyJ. K.OlsonM. A. (2015). Integrating automatic processes into theories of relationships. Current Opinion in Psychology, 1, 107–112.
25.
McNultyJ. K.OlsonM. A.MeltzerA. L.ShafferM. J. (2013). Though they may be unaware, newlyweds implicitly know whether their marriage will be satisfying. Science, 342, 1119–1120.
26.
McNultyJ. K.WennerC. A.FisherT. D. (2016). Longitudinal associations among relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and frequency of sex in early marriage. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 45, 85–97.
27.
MeltzerA. L.McNultyJ. K. (2016). Who is having more and better sex? The Big Five as predictors of sex in marriage. Journal of Research in Personality, 63, 62–66.
28.
MestonC. M.BussD. M. (2007). Why humans have sex. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36, 477–507.
29.
MuiseA.SchimmackU.ImpettE. A. (2016). Sexual frequency predicts greater well-being, but more is not always better. Social Psychological & Personality Science, 7, 295–302.
30.
NortonR. (1983). Measuring marital quality: A critical look at the dependent variable. Journal of Marriage and Family, 45, 141–151.
31.
OsgoodC. E.SuciG. J.TannenbaumP. H. (1957). The measurement of meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
32.
RadloffL. S. (1977). The CES-D scale: A self-report depression scale for research in the general population. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1, 385–401.
RosenbergM. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
35.
SauerM. V.ZefferK. B.BusterJ. E.SokolR. Z. (1988). Effect of abstinence on sperm motility in normal men. American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, 158, 604–607.
36.
SchummW. R.Paff-BergenL. A.HatchR. C.ObiorahF. C.CopelandJ. M.MeensL. D.BugaighisM. A. (1986). Concurrent and discriminant validity of the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale. Journal of Marriage and Family, 48, 381–387.
37.
SimpsonJ. A.GangestadS. W. (1992). Sociosexuality and romantic partner choice. Journal of Personality, 60, 31–51.
38.
TofighiD.MacKinnonD. P. (2011). RMediation: An R package for mediation analysis confidence intervals. Behavior Research Methods, 43, 692–700.
39.
WilcoxA. J.WeinbergC. R.BairdD. D. (1995). Timing of sexual intercourse in relation to ovulation—effects on the probability of conception, survival of the pregnancy, and sex of the baby. New England Journal of Medicine, 333, 1517–1521.
40.
YehH. C.LorenzF. O.WickramaK. A. S.CongerR. D.ElderG. H. (2006). Relationships among sexual satisfaction, marital quality, and marital instability at midlife. Journal of Family Psychology, 20, 339–343.
41.
YoungL. J.WangZ. (2004). The neurobiology of pair bonding. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 1048–1054.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
