Paper Title
The Year’s Best: Interpersonal Elements of Bisexual Women’s Most Satisfying Sexual Experiences in the Past Year
Keywords
- bisexual women
- sexual satisfaction
- interpersonal dynamics
- emotional attunement
- emotional gratification
- partner gratification
- sensory gratification
- sexual experience
- relational dynamics
- intimacy
- mutuality
- partner skill
- communication
- novelty in relationships
- holistic sexual satisfaction
- sexual wellbeing
- mcclelland’s framework
- emotional security
- quality of interaction
- best sex experiences
- thematic analysis
- women’s sexual health
- sexual relationships
- partnered sexual encounters
- psychological aspects of sexuality
- sexual experience diversity
- embodied experiences
- bisexual
- sex
Journal
Research Impact Tools
Publication Info
Volume: 54 | Issue: 7 | Pages: 887–898
Published On
August, 2016
Downloads
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Abstract
Sexual satisfaction is commonly defined and discussed in physiological terms of arousal and orgasm. Yet this narrow discourse does not accommodate the complex, multidimensional, and interpersonal aspects of sexual experience. To broaden and deepen our understanding of sexual satisfaction, we employed McClelland’s (2014) holistic four-factor framework of sexual satisfaction in a theoretical thematic analysis of 39 behaviorally bisexual women’s descriptions of their “best” partnered sexual experiences from the past year. We found women’s accounts mapped on to four elements: emotional attunement, emotional gratification, partner gratification, and sensory gratification. Relational and emotional dynamics, including emotional security, quality of interpersonal interaction during and after a sexual encounter, mutuality, intimacy, partner skill, novelty, and communication, were key to participants’ best sex experiences. Our findings support a multifaceted model of women’s sexual satisfaction that accounts for emotional, relational, and embodied experiences and the diverse relationships and behaviors these might involve.
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