Just when you thought that being in a long-term relationship was a positive thing, study shows that women who stayed with the same men for over seven years reported a decrease in their sexual desire!
Women who are in a long-term relationship are more likely to experience a decrease in sexual desire, scientists have said.
Changes in relationship status were found to affect several different sexual functions, but a libido decline after spending years with the same person was the most pronounced trend overall.
The new research, published in the journal Psychological Medicine, looks at women’s sexual functions — including desire, sexual satisfaction and orgasm — over a period of seven years, and takes into account what kind of relationships these women were in.
Data from 2,173 Finnish women from two large-scale, population-based data registers was collected for the study, seven years apart.
The scientists used the female sexual function index to assess domains of sexual function in women in clinical trials.
Effects of age and relationship duration were taken into account in the statistical analysis.
The researchers discovered that most aspects of women’s sexual functions appeared unstable over the years.
Previous sexual function was not a good predictor of future sexual function overall, with satisfaction, pain and arousal changing over time.
Sexual satisfaction in particular varied greatly in seven years, but the ability to have an orgasm remained stable for most women – suggesting that sexual satisfaction and orgasm are not always linked.
When it came to boosting women’s desire, other sexual functions such as their ability to have an orgasm only had a small impact, but the scientists found out that relationship length and status was perhaps more relevant.
Indeed, women who stayed in the same monogamous relationship from the beginning to the end of the study reported the greatest decrease in their sex drive.
Women who had started a new relationship during the course of the study also experienced reduced libido, but to a smaller degree.
Finally, women who were single at the end of the observation period reported stable sexual desire.
More studies are needed to better make sense of the variations in female sexual function over time.
