Off-Target Emotions, Off-Track Intimacy
Off-Target Emotions, Off-Track Intimacy
by Angelo Viruet, Social Media Intern
How do you even begin to work on sexual well-being in a relationship? There are many parts to a successful relationship, and it might seem daunting. After all, as Huberman and others in a 2025 journal article express, sexual well-being is crucial to a satisfying romantic relationship and contributes notably positively to your life as well. This article—called “Empathic Accuracy for a Partner’s Negative Affect Is Associated With Couples’ Daily Sexual Well-Being”—looks at a part of what can improve this, and the purpose of the article lies in one thing: empathy.
Specifically, they look at the partners’ empathy towards each other. Huberman and others look to something called the Empathic Accuracy Model as the basis of their writing. Essentially, the higher the ‘empathic accuracy’ (or how well one understands another) the more satisfaction and intimacy in a relationship, and if this model is accurate this could even be a beneficial strategy in building one’s relationship.
The article mentions ‘negative affect’ a lot, which is essentially referring to feeling more negative emotions, such as anger or anxiety. Altogether, when this article looks at empathic accuracy when it comes to negative affect, it looks at how well couples can understand and recognize negative emotions in the other and how that relates to sexual well-being. Three parts of well-being came into consideration: sexual satisfaction, sexual desire, and (lower) sexual distress which were measured as well as negative affect, with daily surveys provided to each participant.
What came of this? The results fit what was thought: as it turns out, when there was a difference between what someone reported their negative affect to be and what their partner reported, the less sexual satisfaction and more sexual distress was experienced. Basically, on days when someone got their partner’s emotions wrong, the less sexual well-being they were experiencing. Surprisingly, sexual desire was higher on more inaccurate days, which could be explained by being less influenced by their partner on those days, or believing their partner is feeling less negative emotions because they are feeling that way.
Then how can one apply any of this? It’s in the science: the more someone understands their partner’s emotions, the more this positively impacts sexual well-being. This is one step in creating a functional sexual relationship and improving sexual well-being, backed by research. Communicating with your partner is a must and opens the door to better understanding. Really get to know how your partner is feeling! RCSW offers relationship therapy to get you back on track, including working with communication breakdowns and conflicts.
