Religiosity, Sexual Gratification, and Marital Satisfaction

Abstract

THIS article reports a study of effect of religiosity on relation between sexual gratification and marital satisfaction. One of distinguishing features of marriage is that it is a relationship in which socially sanctioned sexual intercourse is engaged in with some regularity and, particularly in early years, with considerable frequency. Consequently, it could be presumed that more gratifying sexual activity, greater would be participants' satisfaction with their marriages. This conclusion follows from assumption that gratification from a significant, frequently recurring activity contributes to satisfaction with total relationship of which activity is a part. It is likely that tendency for satisfaction with marriage to be influenced by sexual gratification is reinforced in contemporary American society by numerous sources that promulgate idea that sexual gratification is essential for a happy, satisfactory marriage. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that sexual gratification would enhance, and that non-gratification would decrease, women's and men's positive feelings about their marriages as a whole. Research has shown that positive correlation between sexual gratification and marital satisfaction inferred from assumptions advanced above does indeed obtain.' It seems evident, however, that insofar as this correlation is due to marital dissatisfaction stemming from a lack of sexual gratification, it would not obtain (or would do so to a lesser degree) among persons with a diminished sexual drive or among those who have a normal sex drive but for whom a compensatory mechanism is operative. This compensation may be achieved through enhancement of value to individual of a non-sexual component of marital relationship. A sexually dissatisfied wife may, for example, attach increased significance to esteem she derives from her husband's prestige or to material comforts his income makes possible. The enhancement of these, or other non-sexual satisfactions, may serve to attenuate expected negative effect of woman's lack of sexual gratification on her satisfaction with marriage. In addition to individual sources of substitute gratification, here, as in other areas of life, society possesses institutional arrangements with accompanying value structures that serve to mitigate effects of personal distress. One is led in present instance, to consider immediately role of religious organizations and religious beliefs, and this for two reasons. First, religious beliefs and activity have provided and undoubtedly continue to provide for many persons both consolation for distress (i.e. the consolation of religion) and positive gratification (i.e. the peace that passeth all understanding). Secondly, these ministrations are associated with an other-wordly outlook that depreciates-at least relatively to secular orientations-the pleasures of world and *This is first of a number of articles reporting findings of a study dealing with questions relating to sexual behavior of men and women before and after marriage. I am grateful for support given study by Rockefeller Foundation and Social Science Research Council. The study was also supported in part by a grant from Committee for Research in Problems of Sex, National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council. I am indebted to Ernest W. Burgess with whom I collaborated on longterm investigation of engagement and marriage in course of which data of sex study were collected. For their work on various phases of study I owe thanks to Fred Chino, Alexander Clark, Jan Howard, and Don Mills. 'See Lewis M. Terman, Psychological Factors in Marital Happiness, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1938, pp. 300-305. See also Ernest W. Burgess and Paul Wallin, Engagement and Marriage, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1953, pp. 689-692.