When Partners Want Different Amounts of Physical Affection

Sunday, December 28, 2025.

Psychologists have confirmed something couples have been politely circling for decades: it’s not just how much affection you like—it’s whether the person next to you likes it in roughly the same way.

A recent study published in Personal Relationships examines what happens when romantic partners differ in their comfort with physical affection.

The findings are both obvious and quietly unsettling.

Mismatched comfort with physical affection predicts lower relationship well-being—especially when partners perceive themselves as out of sync, even if they are not.

That sentence does most of the work. The rest explains why.

Why Comfort With Touch Predicts Relationship Satisfaction

Physical affection—holding hands, hugging, kissing—has long been treated as the relational equivalent of vitamins.

Prior research links affectionate touch to lower stress, improved immune functioning, and greater emotional security. None of this is controversial.

What receives far less attention is that people vary dramatically in how much touch they want, how often they want it, and under what conditions it feels regulating rather than intrusive. Some people experience touch as grounding. Others experience it as demand.

Most couples discover this mismatch only after they have already taken it personally.

The study found that overall comfort with physical affection was the strongest predictor of relationship well-being across satisfaction, commitment, intimacy, trust, passion, and love.

Private Affection Matters More Than Public Displays

Comfort with private affection—touch that happens when no one else is watching—was more strongly associated with relationship health than comfort with public affection.

What happens in private turns out to matter more than what can be safely displayed in public. This finding held across relationship types.

The Problem Isn’t Mismatch—It’s Feeling Out of Sync

The researchers examined not only how comfortable couples were with touch, but how aligned they were.

In the larger individual sample, participants who believed there was a significant gap between their comfort level and their partner’s reported lower relationship well-being. Feeling out of sync was corrosive.

However, when overall comfort levels were accounted for, the damage caused by mismatch became less consistent. High comfort mattered more than perfect matching.

Why Perceived Differences Hurt More Than Actual Differences

In the dyadic sample—where both partners reported their own comfort levels—actual mismatches were not strongly associated with poorer relationship quality.

Perceived mismatches were.

In other words, believing you are mismatched may be more destabilizing than actually being mismatched. This is a familiar psychological pattern: interpretation often outweighs objective difference. Partners may also accommodate one another quietly, masking discrepancies while resentment accumulates elsewhere.

Physical Affection in Public Isn’t Equally Safe for All Couples

Context matters, especially when affection leaves the private sphere.

For mixed-sex couples, public displays of affection are generally socially neutral.

For same-sex couples, they can invite scrutiny, judgment, or hostility. Many same-sex partners therefore maintain a constant state of vigilance in public settings.

How Same-Sex Couples Navigate Public Affection Differently

Participants in same-sex relationships reported lower comfort with public affection and perceived greater differences between themselves and their partners in public contexts.

This does not indicate relational dysfunction. It reflects environmental threat.

Despite these differences, the underlying psychological pattern was strikingly similar across relationship types.

Private comfort with affection predicted relationship well-being for everyone. While private affection was a slightly stronger predictor for mixed-sex couples, the similarities across groups far outweighed the differences.

For many same-sex couples, private affection becomes the primary space for authenticity—where vigilance can finally relax.

What This Research Gets Right—and What It Can’t Yet Answer

The findings are persuasive, but not definitive.

Why Causality Still Isn’t Clear

The data are cross-sectional, meaning they capture a single moment in time. It’s impossible to determine whether comfort with affection causes better relationships or whether satisfying relationships increase comfort with affection. The two likely reinforce one another.

Who Was Left Out of the Data

The dyadic sample was relatively small, limiting the detection of subtle effects. Gender-diverse and non-binary couples could not be analyzed due to insufficient numbers, leaving an important gap in understanding how affection is negotiated outside binary relationship categories.

What Couples Actually Fight About When Touch Preferences Differ

Couples rarely fight about touch directly.

They fight about initiative, withdrawal, rejection, or pressure.

One partner experiences absence. The other experiences obligation. Both experience misunderstanding.

This study suggests that the most damaging dynamic is not difference itself, but the belief that one’s needs are fundamentally misaligned with the person they love.

When that belief sets in, even small moments of touch—or its absence—can begin to feel symbolic, weighted, and loaded with meaning they were never meant to carry.

Final Thoughts

Touch is not merely physical behavior. It is a language of regulation, safety, and recognition.

Relationships do not quietly erode because partners want different things. They erode because partners stop believing their differences can be held without cost.

Comfort with affection—especially in private—functions less as a measure of romance than as an index of emotional safety.

And emotional safety, once compromised, is always felt before it is named.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Sgambati, S., Holmberg, D., & Blair, K. L. (2025). In sync? Assessing partners’ similarities in comfort with physical affection–sharing as a predictor of relationship well-being. Personal Relationships.