Quantifying the Sexual Afterglow: The Lingering Benefits of Sex and Their Implications for Pair-Bonded Relationships

Abstract

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.

Responses to Sexual Advances and Satisfaction in Romantic Relationships: Is Yes Good and No Bad?

“…Birnbaum & Finkel, 2015), and that acceptance was offered by one's partner, which is also a positive relationship experience (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Additionally, having one's advance accepted was associated with increased sexual satisfaction 24 hours after the advance was made, consistent with the sexual afterglow effect reported by Meltzer et al (2017), but was not found for the full 48 hours as was reported in this prior research. Although we found positive effects across various relationships and sexual encounters, we also note there are situations in which sexual acceptance is harmful (e.g.…”

“…Finally, the current research addresses some of the limitations of Meltzer and colleagues’ (2017) work and replicates and extends this research by examining how long satisfaction may remain increased following acceptance of a sexual advance and decreased following rejection. Consistent with the sexual afterglow effect, we anticipated that the benefits of sexual acceptance would last 48 hr and proposed that the adverse effects of sexual rejection would last a similar amount of time.…”

“…For comparison, we sought to replicate the sexual afterglow effect (Meltzer et al, 2017) examining the association of sexual activity versus no sexual activity with sexual satisfaction while disregarding which partner made the advance and which responded, as well as whether a lack of sexual activity was due to no advances being made or sexual rejection occurring. We used the same modeling procedures described above, but used the presence of sexual activity as a predictor rather than the sexual advance status variables, and included day of diary entry as a predictor to be consistent with Meltzer and colleagues (2017). Results are summarized in Table 4.…”

“…Accepting a partner's sexual advance or having one's advance accepted by a partner is typically associated with benefits to the self and the relationship, including feeling more attractive, promoting intimacy, and increasing sexual satisfaction (Dosch, Rochat, Ghisletta, Favez & Van der Linden, 2016;Koch, Mansfield, Thurau & Carey, 2005;Yoo, Bartle-Haring, Day, & Gangamma, 2014). Recent research has shown that engaging in sexual activity with a romantic partner is not only associated with increased sexual satisfaction on that day, but the effects endured for up to 48 hours, which the authors termed the sexual afterglow effect (Meltzer, Makhanova, Hicks, French, McNulty, & Bradbury, 2017). However, this research only recruited newlyweds, which limits its generalizability, and only accounted for the presence or absence of sexual activity, and not which partner made the advance, which partner responded, or whether the lack of sexual activity was due to sexual rejection.…”

Securing your relationship: Quality of intimate relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic can be predicted by attachment style

“…'Sexual afterglow' -evidenced in elevated levels of sexual satisfaction -might facilitate pair bonding beyond sex (Meltzer et al, 2017); however, the effect should have been captured by our input feature 'sexual satisfaction'. Overall, no aspect of sexual behavior or satisfaction was predictive for reported relationship quality in our models, and our data do not provide further evidence to the large body of literature connecting the variables.…”