Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Using Spectral And Cross-Spectral Analysis To Identify Patterns And Synchrony In Couples' Sexual Desire, Matthew J. Vowels, Kristen P. Mark, Laura M. Vowels, Nathan D. Wood

Kinesiology and Health Promotion Faculty Publications

Sexual desire discrepancy is one of the most frequently reported sexual concerns for individuals and couples and has been shown to be negatively associated with sexual and relationship satisfaction. Sexual desire has increasingly been examined as a state-like construct that ebbs and flows, but little is known about whether there are patterns in the fluctuation of sexual desire. Utilizing spectral and cross-spectral analysis, we transformed 30 days of dyadic daily diary data for perceived levels of sexual desire for a non-clinical sample of 133 couples (266 individuals) into the frequency domain to identify shared periodic state fluctuations in sexual desire. …