Adult attachment, sexual satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction: A study of married couples

The goal of this research was to extend prior work on adult attachment and sexuality, which has tended to focus on samples of adolescents and undergraduate students. A Canadian sample of 116 married couples aged 21-75 years completed self-report measures of adult attachment, marital, and sexual satisfaction. Results revealed that participants with higher levels of anxiety and avoidance reported lower levels of sexual satisfaction at the individual level. Individuals with more avoidant spouses also reported lower levels of sexual satisfaction. Furthermore, the relationship between sexual and marital satisfaction was stronger for more anxiously attached individuals and those with more anxiously attached spouses. These results suggest that attachment is linked in theoretically predictable ways to marital and sexual satisfaction.