Disease-Afflicted Older Adults: Can Marital Quality Help or Hinder Their Sexual Frequency?

Shannon Shen , Texas A&M University - San Antonio

I work from a stress-buffering perspective to examine how marital quality is related to the sexual frequency of partnered older adults who are afflicted with one or more chronic diseases. I use data from the first two waves of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (N=1,012) to run regression models with lagged dependent variables. Among older adults with chronic disease, an increase in positive marital quality over time, as well as higher positive marital quality at baseline for men, is related to higher sexual frequency five years later. Additionally, an increase in older adults’ negative marital quality, as well as a higher baseline level of negative marital quality for men, is related to lower sexual frequency five years later. By analyzing a unique, unhealthy sample, the results demonstrate that marital quality may be one way that disease-afflicted adults can protect their sexual activity in later life.

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 Presented in Session 77. Marital Relationships and Well-being