I guess I feel kind of confused by the framing of the question. I don’t have a model under which the sexual aspect of a long-term relationship typically makes up the bulk of its value to the participants. So, if a long-term relationship isn’t doing well on that front, and yet both participants keep pursuing the relationship, my first guess would be that it’s due to the value of everything that is not that. I wouldn’t particularly expect any one thing to stick out here. Maybe they have a thing where they cuddle and watch the sunrise together while they talk about their problems. Maybe they have a shared passion for arthouse films. Maybe they have so much history and such a mutually integrated life with partitioned responsibilities that learning to live alone again would be a massive labour investment, practically and emotionally. Maybe they admire each other. Probably there’s a mixture of many things like that going on. Love can be fed by many little sources.
So, this I suppose:
Their romantic partner offering lots of value in other ways. I’m skeptical of this one because female partners are typically notoriously high maintenance in money, attention, and emotional labor. Sure, she might be great in a lot of ways, but it’s hard for that to add up enough to outweigh the usual costs.
I don’t find it hard at all to see how that’d add up to something that vastly outweighs the costs, and this would be my starting guess for what’s mainly going on in most long-term relationships of this type.
This data seems to be for sexual satisfaction rather than romantic satisfaction or general relationship satisfaction.
Yes, the question is what value-proposition accounts for the romantic or general relationship satisfaction.
Relationship … stuff?
I guess I feel kind of confused by the framing of the question. I don’t have a model under which the sexual aspect of a long-term relationship typically makes up the bulk of its value to the participants. So, if a long-term relationship isn’t doing well on that front, and yet both participants keep pursuing the relationship, my first guess would be that it’s due to the value of everything that is not that. I wouldn’t particularly expect any one thing to stick out here. Maybe they have a thing where they cuddle and watch the sunrise together while they talk about their problems. Maybe they have a shared passion for arthouse films. Maybe they have so much history and such a mutually integrated life with partitioned responsibilities that learning to live alone again would be a massive labour investment, practically and emotionally. Maybe they admire each other. Probably there’s a mixture of many things like that going on. Love can be fed by many little sources.
So, this I suppose:
I don’t find it hard at all to see how that’d add up to something that vastly outweighs the costs, and this would be my starting guess for what’s mainly going on in most long-term relationships of this type.