Daily associations between partner responses and sexual and relationship satisfaction in couples coping with provoked vestibulodynia.

INTRODUCTION: Women with provoked vestibulodynia (PVD) experience a recurrent vulvo-vaginal pain triggered primarily during sexual intercourse. Although affected couples report adverse effects on their sexual and global romantic relationships, few studies have examined interpersonal factors that may influence their sexual and relationship satisfaction. Cross-sectional studies have shown that greater partner solicitous and negative responses and lower facilitative responses are associated with poorer sexual and relationship satisfaction in women with PVD.

AIM: The aim of this study was to investigate the within-person associations between partner responses to painful intercourse and the sexual and relationship satisfaction of affected couples.

METHODS: In a dyadic daily experience study, 69 women (M(age) = 28.46, SD = 6.66) diagnosed with PVD and their cohabitating male partners (M(age) = 30.29, SD = 8.13) reported on male partner responses, as well as sexual and relationship satisfaction on sexual intercourse days (M = 6.81; SD = 5.40) over 8 weeks.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Dependent measures were the (i) Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale and (ii) Global Measure of Sexual Satisfaction Scale.

RESULTS: On sexual intercourse days when women perceived more facilitative partner responses than usual and on days when they perceived lower negative partner responses than usual, they reported higher sexual and relationship satisfaction. On sexual intercourse days when men reported more solicitous responses than usual, both they and their female partners reported lower sexual satisfaction.

CONCLUSIONS: Interventions aimed at improving the day-to-day sexual and relationship satisfaction of couples with PVD should target increasing facilitative and decreasing negative and solicitous partner responses.