Erotic Plasticity, Gender and Women's Gatekeeper Roles on Sexuality: Perceived Implications for Marital Relationship Maintenance

Abstract

Females have been identified as a group whose sex drive is readily shaped by social, cultural and situational factors. Accordingly, female sexuality has been documented to be inherently more amenable than male sexuality to influence by situational circumstances. This study therefore investigated the perceived influence of erotic plasticity, gender and sexual gatekeeper roles of women on marital relationship maintenance. One hundred and seventy-three (173) undergraduates of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, were randomly selected to complete measures of erotic plasticity, sexual gate-keeping roles and relationship maintenance. Two hypotheses were tested using 2x2x2 factorial and correlational designs respectively. The ANOVA result which reported main and interaction effects of the independent variables on relationship maintenance showed a significant main influence of sexual gate-keeping role [F(1,165) = 9.659, p<.05] on relationship maintenance. Also, the three-way interaction was significant [F (1,165) = 5.293, p<.05] while Erotic plasticity [F(1,165) = .297, p>.05], gender [F(1,165) = 1.832, p>.05] and the two-way joint effects yielded non-significant results on relationship maintenance. The prediction regarding inter-correlation among variables showed that age (r = .163; p<.05) and sexual gate-keeping (r = .210; p<.05) were positively related to relationship maintenance while number of children (r = -.695; p <.05) showed negative relationship with relationship maintenance. Furthermore, all variables significantly positively related to each other except number of children. These results were discussed in relation to empirical evidence. The paper concluded with recommendations which advised couples to choose relevant relationship maintenance strategies to navigate their peculiar marital situations towards satisfaction and stability.