Turns Out, There's A Link Between Gratitude & Better Sex

Gratitude practices are all the rage these days, and for good reason. Research continues to unearth more and more benefits of gratitude, from relieving stress to improving sleep. The latest addition to the list? Better sex among couples.

A team of researchers wanted to see if gratitude could improve something called sexual communal strength, which is the degree to which a person is motivated to meet their partner's sexual needs. People high in sexual communal strength genuinely care about their partner's pleasure and meeting their partner's needs, and past research has shown folks with higher sexual communal strength tend to have happier relationships and more sexually satisfying ones. Some studies have even found people with higher sexual communal strength tend to have more sexual desire in general and an easier time getting aroused.

So, how do you increase this coveted quality of sexual communal strength? The researchers' theory: more gratitude.

The team—including psychologists Ashlyn Brady, Levi R. Baker, Amy Muise, and Emily Impett—tested this theory out over the course of three separate studies.

In one study, the researchers surveyed 185 people in relationships about their sexual communal strength, their experiences of gratitude toward their partner, and the expressions of gratitude they received from their partner. Lo and behold, people who'd had more gratitude in the relationship (both felt and received) tended to have more sexual communal strength. 

In another study, they had 118 couples track these gratitude experiences and their levels of sexual communal strength over the course of three months. As the researchers periodically checked in with the couples, they found both experiencing and receiving gratitude was associated with improvements in sexual communal strength over time.

If gratitude helps boost sexual communal strength, and sexual communal strength boosts both partners' sexual satisfaction, then it's reasonable to assume gratitude could be a key ingredient to mutually satisfying sex in a relationship.

"Gratitude is a positively valenced emotion that arises in response to the recognition that another person has been beneficial or valuable to them," Brady and her colleagues write in the paper on their findings. "Gratitude functions to motivate people to maintain relationships with valuable others. The current studies extend this growing body of literature to the sexual domain by revealing that gratitude similarly motivates people to meet their partner's sexual needs."

The takeaway? Couples working on improving their sex life might benefit from adopting a regular gratitude practice, including both individually journaling about why they're grateful for each other and sharing that appreciation for each other openly. (Now, of course, this only works if this gratitude is authentic and without ulterior motives. And likewise, our motivation to support each other's pleasure must come out of authentic enthusiasm and not pressure.)