Associations Between Premarital Factors and First-Married, Heterosexual Newlywed Couples’ Frequency of Sex and Sexual Satisfaction Trajectories

Attachment styles and mate-retention: Exploring the mediating role of relationship satisfaction.

“…On the other hand, avoidant individuals tend to engage less often in both types of mate-retention strategies. However, a recent study only partially confirmed previous results as the positive association between anxious attachment and benefit-provisioning strategies did not replicate (Altgelt & Meltzer, 2019). Therefore, further investigation of the association between attachment styles and mate-retention strategies is necessary.…”

“…This also implies that individuals who are happier with their relationship will invest in it by engaging in benefit-provisioning strategies and relying less on cost-inflicting strategies (Conroy-Beam et al, 2015). This may be because cost-inflicting strategies may decrease the quality of a relationship (Altgelt & Meltzer, 2021) and may also lead the partner to reciprocate with equally negative strategies. These findings suggest that reducing attachment anxiety and avoidance could increase high relationship satisfaction and therefore, prevent the display of cost-inflicting strategies.…”

“…Because relationship satisfaction, which is associated with insecure attachment (Candel & Turliuc, 2019) is hypothesized to be a mechanism that monitors the quality of a relationship and as such, predicts investment in the relationship (e.g., efforts to retain a desired mate; Conroy-Beam et al, 2016), we hypothesize that relationship satisfaction mediates the association between attachment insecurity and mate retention. We did not create any hypotheses regarding secure attachment as previous studies have found this attachment dimension to be uncorrelated with mate-retention strategies (see Altgelt & Meltzer, 2021; Barbaro et al, 2018).…”