Partner Understanding

I have collaborated with two of my former graduate students, Andrea Miller and Deanne Simms, on three studies examining couple understanding and misperceptions of their partner's sexual preferences.

Andrea  and I  explored heterosexual couple’s actual and desired duration of foreplay and intercourse. We also examined whether  misperceptions or stereotypes related to duration of foreplay and intercourse were present within heterosexual couples. In total, 152 couples participated in this study. We found that ideal duration of foreplay did not differ for men and women. However, men reported a significantly higher ideal duration of intercourse than their partners did. Both men and women perceived that their duration of foreplay and intercourse was shorter than their ideal. The women, but not the men, significantly underestimated their partner’s desired duration of foreplay and intercourse. Further, both genders exhibited faulty stereotypes concerning men’s, but not women’s, ideal duration of foreplay and intercourse, underestimating what men would ideally desire. Both men’s and women’s perceptions of their partner’s ideal duration of foreplay and intercourse were found to be more strongly related to their own sexual stereotypes than to their partner’s self-reported sexual desires, suggesting that people rely on sexual stereotypes when estimating their partner’s ideal sexual script. This work was published in The Journal of Sex Research.

Dee and I  investigated gender differences in interpersonal perceptions of desired frequency of sexual behaviours and their association with the sexual satisfaction of dating couples. We found that the men’s ideal frequency for engaging in sexual behaviours was greater than the women’s, both partners perceived each other’s ideal frequencies to be more dissimilar than they actually were, and the women perceived greater dissimilarity between their own and their partner’s ideal frequencies than did the men. The women overestimated their partner’s ideal sexual frequency for different behaviours whereas the men were accurate in their understanding of their partner’s in this regard. The more frequently partners engaged in sexual activities and the more similar men perceived their own and their partner’s ideal sexual frequency to be, the higher the sexual satisfaction of both partners. This work has been published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality.

 Publications and selected conference presentation based on this work:

Simms, D., & Byers, E. S. (2009). Interpersonal perceptions of desired frequency of sexual behaviours. Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 18, 15-25. 

Miller, S. A. & Byers, E. S. (2004). Actual and desired duration of foreplay and intercourse: Discordance and misperceptions within heterosexual couples. The Journal of Sex Research, 41, 301-309.

Simms, D. & Byers, E. S. (2007, June).  Gender differences in sexual satisfaction in dating partners.  Poster presented at the meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association, Ottawa, ON.

Simms, D., & Byers, E. S. (2006, October). Gender differences in sexual satisfaction. Paper presented  at the meeting of the  Canadian Sex Research Forum Meeting, Ottawa, ON. [Winner of the CSRF Student Paper Award].