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

Objective: 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 (1) Self-reported attachment styles (2) Self-reported marital satisfaction (3) Self-reported sex guilt. Methods: The data were obtained from a total of 192 married Iranian women who were selected via multi-cluster sampling method from universities of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation, Tarbiat Modares, and Islamic Azad. The subjects’ 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 collected. 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 was 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 could collectively explain 52.5% of the sexual desire variance. Conclusion: Higher scores in secure and ambivalent attachment styles and marital satisfaction are associated with higher scores of sexual desire. However, with increasing insecure avoidant attachment style and sex guilt, the scores of sexual desire decline. Also age and marriage duration are inversely related to sexual desire.