What Research Says About Desire and Dating

Romantic comedies sell tickets year after year, which suggests a steady public curiosity about how couples meet, grow close and sometimes drift apart. Sex and relationship researchers study the same questions with surveys, diaries and interviews rather than screenplays.

One Canadian example is the work of a social psychology researcher who completed doctoral studies in the early 2010s and then moved to a postdoctoral position at a Canadian university. The research looked at how partners' goals and mutual influence shape desire, and how new media have altered the way people date.

Does desire fade over time?

Researchers generally report that sexual desire tends to dip somewhat as a relationship matures, with the intensity of the early months giving way to a calmer familiarity. Length of relationship is only one factor, though. Some couples keep strong desire for decades, and others who report a decline still describe themselves as close, connected and satisfied. A drop in desire therefore does not map neatly onto a failing relationship.

Motives for sex

A study of long-term couples asked partners why they have sex and what shapes their desire. A notable finding was that motive predicted desire better than how often a couple had sex. Researchers separate reasons into two broad groups.

• Approach goals aim at a positive result, such as pleasure, closeness or celebration. In the research, these were linked to higher desire for a partner.
• Avoidance goals aim to prevent a negative result, such as conflict or guilt. These were linked to lower desire.

Social media and texting

The same researchers examined how digital tools affect couples. Facebook can help partners who live far apart feel connected, yet it can also surface information that triggers jealousy and conflict. Text messaging makes it simpler to start a conversation with someone new, while also making tone easier to misread.

Participants still ranked face-to-face and phone contact as the more intimate and appropriate ways to ask someone out, which points to a hierarchy of communication with in-person contact on top.

Gender differences in the findings

In the samples studied, women spent more time on Facebook, posted more photos and had larger friend lists than men. Women were also described as more likely to look up information after a jealousy trigger and to treat a partner's profile as an extension of their own. On initiating dates, participants described the traditional script as one where men ask, but views grew more egalitarian when the invitation arrived by text or social media.

Gaps in current knowledge

The researcher noted that much of what is known about desire comes from university students in fairly new relationships. Studying older and longer-established couples was named as a next step, along with continued work on how technology reshapes dating. Findings of this kind describe averages across groups, so individual couples can look quite different.