Sexting adds sizzle and strain to relationships, Edmonton study suggests
CBC News | Posted: January 30, 2018 4:33 PM | Last Updated: January 30, 2018
Sending racy messages may undermine healthy romances, concludes cross-border survey
Sexting to add a little spice to your sexual encounters may actually be damaging your relationship outside the bedroom, a new study from the University of Alberta suggests.
The study found that people who regularly send their partners racy messages had better sex lives than those who don't send each other sexual messages or photos via smartphone or other devices.
While frequent sexters reported greater satisfaction in the bedroom, they struggled with other aspects of their relationships.
Sexting — a play on "texting" — can undermine healthy relationships, the poll suggests.
"This does not seem to be something that's part of a normal, healthy adult relationship," said Michelle Drouin, a psychology professor with Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, who helped oversee the research.
"People who were sexting more often were involved in more conflict, they had more feelings about leaving their relationship," Drouin said in an interview with CBC Radio's Edmonton AM.
"They had low levels of commitment to their partner, more insecure attachment to the partner — maybe fearing the partner would leave, or not feeling very connected."
The research is being published in the February issue of the journal Computers in Human Behaviour.
The study sampled 616 Americans and Canadians in committed heterosexual and same-sex relationships.
Four distinct groups emerged: non-sexters, word-only sexters, frequent sexters, and hyper-sexters.
'Technological interference'
"Frequent" sexters (those who send three or four messages a week) and "hyper-sexters" (people who send at least one message a day) reported feeling insecure in their relationships.
They also noted a higher degree of couple conflict and lower levels of commitment to their partners. They were more likely to watch pornography and exhibited infidelity on social media.
Are people starting to take shortcuts in their relationships because of all this easy technology? - Adam Galovan
Frequent texters also reported a high level of distraction or "technological interference" — their partners were often engrossed by their phones or computers, which cut down on face-to-face interaction time.
"If you're in a face-to-face conversation, you pull out your phone while you're with your partner and that interrupts your time together," said Adam Galovan, a family scientist in the University of Alberta's department of human ecology and the study's lead author.
"We're seeing some of that and we're wondering, are people starting to take shortcuts in their relationships because of all this easy technology?
"We don't know for sure how technology is changing our lives and that's something we want to look at in the future."
For younger couples, we don't really know the answer yet -Michelle Drouin
The study is part of The Couple Well-Being Project, a larger research initiative focused on exploring the dynamics of modern relationships.
The researchers hope to turn the sexting study into a long-term research project. The way people interact with technology is changing, said Drouin.
"The average age of the people that we looked at was 33," said Drouin. "So for these people ... it certainly doesn't seem that sexting is an integral part of their marriages or or a beneficial part of their partnerships.
"However, this is one of the things that merits further exploration. For younger couples, we don't really know the answer yet."