Try Something New Together – Research Shows Engaging In “Self-Expanding Activities” Rekindles The Sexual Desire Of Long-Term Couples

By Christian Jarrett People have a basic drive to learn and develop and to see themselves and the world in new ways. That’s according to the psychologists Arthur Aron and Elaine Aron, who refer to this as our need for “self-expansion”. It follows from their theory that any chance to self-expand should be rewarding, and that if you can self-expand while doing things with your romantic partner then your relationship will benefit. Previous research has hinted that this is the case, finding that when couples engaged in self-expanding activities together – anything that felt new, exciting, interesting and/or challenging – their satisfaction with their relationship increased. Now in a paper in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Amy Muise at York University and her colleagues have taken things further, laying out evidence that a major part of the reason that participating in self-expanding activities is good for relationships is that it boosts your sexual desire for your partner and increases the likelihood you will have rewarding sex – and, moreover, that this is particularly the case for people in long-term relationships. For two 21-day diary studies, the researchers recruited over 200 couples who had been in an exclusive relationship (most of them heterosexual) for an average of 8 years (the first study) or 5 years (the second). Each night the participants recorded on their own whether they had engaged in self-expanding activities with their pa...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Sex Source Type: blogs