Long term relationships are sexually satisfying

Photo by Ian MacKenzie

I love this new research out about couples in long term relationships and sexual satisfaction. Run by the Kinsey Institute, renown for "advancing sexual health and knowledge worldwide," it shows that not only do men enjoy kissing and cuddling but it's actually more important to them than to women, and sexual satisfaction is slightly more important to women. Men also reported being happier if they were healthy and they could make their partners orgasm. These findings seem contrary to popular opinion which makes the study especially interesting.

The study participants were men aged 40-70 and their female partners in relationships as short as 1 year, but on average 25 years long from 5 countries (United States, Japan, Germany, Spain, and Brazil). The more kissing and caressing a couple shared, the more likely they were to be sexually satisfied. And the longer the couple had been together, the happier they were.

These study results show that intimacy between couples leads to happiness and sexual satisfaction. Cuddling and caressing are sweet, intimate acts that people share with each other when they genuinely like each other. Think about it -- how often do you touch someone you don't like? Probably never or at least as little as possible. And the longer a couple is together, the more comfortable they are with each other, and the more comfortable you are with someone, the better the sex becomes because there's greater intimacy between the two of you. The study bears this out: women reported being more sexually satisfied the longer they'd been in their relationship.

This MSNBC article is a pretty cute write up on the study results: The jig is up — guys like to cuddle more. The Kinsey article: Couples report gender differences in relationship, sexual satisfaction over time, and the study results in PDF format.