Sexual awareness and attachment anxiety/avoidance on sexual satisfaction and functioning

Abstract

Although global research findings have been increasingly discussing sexuality and factors surrounding it, sex is still an aspect of our lives that is hugely tabooed and ghosted in our culture. The quality of our sexual relationships has multiple psychological factors affecting it, alongside the physiological. We wanted to study some of these variables affecting our culture in specific in our research, which include sexual awareness, attachment anxiety, and attachment avoidance. The hypotheses proposed were that sexual awareness positively correlates with the quality of sexual encounters (satisfaction and functioning), whereas attachment insecurity (anxiety/avoidance) negatively correlates with this quality. The participants tested were 18–35-year-olds, sexually active, of different genders, and were mainly university students. A questionnaire was sent to the participants testing for the four variables discussed. The scales used to measure each variable were the Sexual Awareness Scale, ECR-12 to measure attachment anxiety and avoidance, Sexual Functioning Evaluation Questionnaire, and the Sexual Satisfaction Questionnaire. The data analysis comprised of two methods on SPSS: the Pearson correlational analysis to test the correlation between each independent variable on sexual satisfaction & functioning, and a Hierarchical Regression to compare the significance of the correlation of each independent variable on the sexual satisfaction/functioning. Results showed a strong positive correlation between sexual awareness and sexual satisfaction as predicted (p<.01) and showed a strong negative correlation between attachment avoidance and satisfaction (p<.01). A strong negative correlation was also present between avoidance and functioning (p=.01). The hierarchical regression showed that sexual awareness significantly predicted sexual satisfaction, but a 14.7% variation was shown in the regression model of satisfaction when adding attachment avoidance and anxiety. Slightly different results were shown in the sexual functioning regression.