Are underlying fears of rejection and vulnerability undermining your sex life? Those thoughts running through your head are impacting your sex life. Sexual satisfaction is an important contributor to the quality of most people’s lives and relationships. Although sex can’t save a broken relationship, research shows that it enables partners to feel less bothered by each other’s minor flaws and imperfections. Sex also encourages intimacy and connection, both of which are essential to healthy, satisfying relationships.
Unfortunately, studies with nationally representative samples show that roughly 30 percent of adults report being unsatisfied with their sex lives (Heiman et al., 2011). Given the centrality of sex for so many people’s happiness, it makes sense to pinpoint why this is. What is preventing people, exactly, from having better, more satisfying sex?
A new research study provides some answers by looking at the impact of attachment style on sexual satisfaction. Specifically, the study examines how the particular pattern of negative thoughts that characterize insecure attachment styles undermine a person’s ability to truly enjoy sex.
Attachment Style
Attachment style theory posits that our adult romantic attachment style is set early on in childhood and modeled primarily on our relationships with our caregivers. Securely attached adults, for example, enjoyed healthy, consistent love from early caregivers. As adults, they tend to gravitate toward healthy, secure relationships. This is easy to do when safety, intimacy, and trust feel so familiar.
Insecurely attached individuals, of which there are two types, anxious and avoidant, are not so lucky. Anxiously attached people grew up with inconsistent parenting. Sometimes their parents were affectionate and warm, but other times they were absent or withholding. As a result, anxiously attached people fear abandonment. Their partners often feel like it’s impossible to reassure them. The anxiously attached person wants to merge completely with their partner, which ironically, makes that partner crave space.
Avoidantly attached individuals typically grew up with emotionally avoidant or absent caregivers and thus are emotionally avoidant themselves. Underneath, they fear rejection. Their emotional avoidance also makes them largely unaware of their own inner emotional state. They have a hard time expressing their feelings, which can make them feel like failures as if other people are asking them to speak a language they just don’t know how to speak.
Attachment Style and Sexual Mindfulness
Research consistently shows that people with insecure (versus secure) attachment styles tend to have less satisfying sex. But it’s helpful to understand exactly why. The authors of this study found that the answer hinges on sexual mindfulness, that sense of being in the moment and out of your own head during sex. They proposed that the kind of disinhibition that’s required for satisfying sex is less likely to happen for people with insecure attachment styles because of the particular types of insecurities running through their heads.
Through a series of questionnaires, the authors established that people with anxious attachment styles experience a fear of being rejected during sex. They also possess heightened expectations of closeness with their romantic partners during sex, which then feel like they’re not being met. All of this hinders them from experiencing sex holistically. Their intrusive thoughts distract attention away from erotic stimuli as well as from their own bodily sensations.
Avoidantly attached people struggle with a different type of issue. For them, sex can activate feelings of estrangement or alienation. They anticipate, and dread, that sex will make them feel dependent on their partner. Sex feels like a disconnected, almost cold experience. It’s not particularly pleasant.
The truth about sexual satisfaction
The authors of this study emphasize the following; insecure attachment styles diminish sex because they prevent sexual mindfulness. Negative thoughts and insecurities keep people from living in the “here and now,” a critical prerequisite to enjoying sexual pleasure. Their worries and doubts also distract them from the physical sensations of their own bodies, as well as the sexual cues emanating from their partner.
There are lessons to be learned from this study even for the most securely attached people. Great sex requires a type of surrendering of thought that is antithetical to insecurity and worry. It involves sexual mindfulness, meaning that both partners need to be fully present and attuned to their own bodies. Everyone at times can experience a fear of abandonment or rejection and many people have trouble with feeling emotionally vulnerable. It’s important to work on healing those anxieties and insecurities. They hurt not only your ability to connect with a relationship partner but also your ability to enjoy truly satisfying sex.
References
Lafortune D, Girard M, Bolduc R, Boislard MA, Godbout N. Insecure Attachment and Sexual Satisfaction: A Path Analysis Model Integrating Sexual Mindfulness, Sexual Anxiety, and Sexual Self-Esteem. J Sex Marital Ther. 2021
Heiman, J. R., Long, J. S., Smith, S. N., Fisher, W. A., Sand, M. S., & Rosen, R. C. (2011). Sexual satisfaction and relationship happiness in midlife and older couples in five countries. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 40(4), 741–75
