The Relationship Between Attachment Styles, Marital Satisfaction and Sex Guilt with Sexual Desire in Iranian Women

Objectives: Among a representative sample of married women in the capital of Iran, Tehran, we aimed to determine the association of self-reported sexual desire with: (i) self-reported attachment styles; (ii) self-reported marital satisfaction; (iii) and self-reported sex guilt. Method: The data presented here were obtained from a total of 192 married Iranian women who were selected via a multi-cluster sampling method from University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation, Tarbiat Modarres University and Islamic Azad University. The subjectsʹ sociodemographic data, attachment styles (Adult Attachment Styles Index), marital satisfaction (ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Questionnaire), sex guilt (Mosher Revised Sex- Guilt Inventory) and sexual desire (Hurlbert Index of Sexual Desire) were gathered. Results: Pearson correlation coefficient and regression analysis were used to analyze the data. Findings showed that there is a significant relationship between sexual desire and secure attachment style(r=0.283,p < 0.01),insecure-avoidant attachment style(r=-0.321,p < 0.01), insecure-ambivalent attachment style(r=0.144,p < 0.05), marital satisfaction (r=0.512,p < 0.01) and sex guilt(r=-0.442,p < 0.01). There were also a significant negative relationship between sexual desire and age(r=-0.553,p < 0.01) and marriage duration(r=-0.349,p < 0.01) .Age, marital satisfaction, ambivalent attachment style and sex guilt were able to predict 52.5 percent of the variance of sexual desire. Conclusion: Higher scores in Secure and ambivalent attachment styles and marital satisfaction, were associated with higher scores of sexual desire. On the other hand when scores of insecure avoidant attachment style and sex guilt increased, there was a declination in the scores of sexual desire. Also age and marriage duration were inversely related to sexual desire.