Why Sexual Desire Thrives When Both Partners Feel Influential
Tuesday, January 27, 2026.
There is a superstition baked into modern intimacy that power is corrosive.
That if one partner feels influential, the other must be diminished.
That equality means nobody pulls harder on the rope.
That desire survives only when no one risks wanting too much.
The research keeps refusing this story.
A multi-study paper published in The Journal of Sex Research arrives at a quietly disruptive conclusion:
when life partners feel they have real influence in their relationship, sex tends to improve—for them and for their partner.
Not because they dominate.
Not because they control.
But because influence stabilizes erotic life.
That distinction matters more than we admit.
What Researchers Actually Mean by “Power”
In this research, power is not swagger, entitlement, or sexual leverage.
It is defined narrowly and clinically as the felt ability to shape relational outcomes:
to be taken seriously,
to have needs register,
to know that asking does not endanger connection.
This is not about winning.
It is about relational efficacy.
Across heterosexual and LGBTQ couples, people who felt influential reported:
higher sexual satisfaction,
greater motivation for sex,
and more comfort expressing desire.
Here is the part that unsettles the usual fear-based framing: their partners also benefited.
Which means power—at least in functioning relationships—is not behaving like a finite resource.
Gottman Saw This First (We Just Filed It Under the Wrong Category)
Decades before this sexuality research, John Gottman identified one of the strongest predictors of marital stability: husbands’ willingness to accept influence from their wives.
Men who could be moved—who did not reflexively defend, dismiss, or stonewall—had marriages that lasted. Men who could not, did not.
This finding is often discussed as a conflict-management issue.
It is also an erotic one.
A partner who refuses influence is not safe to desire with.
Sex requires permeability.
Responsiveness.
The willingness to be changed—slightly, temporarily, playfully—by another person.
When a husband accepts influence from his wife, he is not relinquishing authority. He is demonstrating relational openness, which is the precondition for sustained erotic tension.
Power that circulates is arousing.
Power that blocks becomes dead weight.
Influence Is Not a Zero-Sum Game
One of the most important findings across these studies is deceptively simple: one partner feeling powerful does not require the other to feel powerless.
Couples frequently reported simultaneous power.
Both partners felt consequential.
Both felt able to initiate.
Both trusted that their “yes” and their “no” mattered.
This aligns cleanly with Gottman’s work. Accepting influence does not shrink one partner—it expands the relational field.
Erotic systems do not collapse when influence is shared.
They warm.
Wanting Power Is Not the Same as Having It
A subtler finding deserves attention: desiring control over a partner did not reliably improve sexual outcomes.
This matters clinically.
The wish for power often signals insecurity.
The experience of influence signals safety.
People who feel secure in their relational impact do not need to posture.
They do not eroticize withholding.
They do not use sex to negotiate worth.
They speak plainly.
And plain speech—desire without fear—is consistently erotic.
Why Influence Stabilizes Sexual Desire
From a therapeutic standpoint, the mechanism is straightforward.
Sex thrives when:
agency is intact,
bids are safe,
and influence moves in both directions.
Feeling influential reduces relational latency—the lag between wanting something and daring to say it.
When latency drops:
desire surfaces earlier,
resentment accumulates less,
and sex stops carrying the burden of emotional compensation.
A powerful partner is often just a clear partner.
Clarity is not dominance.
It is orientation.
What This Research Does Not Argue For
This is not a case for entitlement, hierarchy, or erotic coercion.
Power here is not I win.
It is I matter—and so do you.
Gottman’s research is explicit: relationships fail not because women have influence, but because men refuse to accept it. Sexual systems erode for the same reason.
Desire does not revive when one partner shrinks.
It revives when both partners remain consequential.
Research Note: Power, Influence, and Sexual Satisfaction
This essay rests on a quiet convergence in relationship science: sexual vitality tracks less with equality than with influence that can move.
Recent research published in The Journal of Sex Research by Körner and Schütz distinguishes between two often-confused experiences—experienced power (the felt ability to influence a partner) and desired power (the wish to control one). Across multiple samples, including heterosexual and LGBTQ couples, the difference mattered.
Across four studies—using dyadic data and daily diary methods—experienced power reliably predicted greater sexual satisfaction, stronger sexual motivation, and more sexual assertiveness.
Wanting power, by contrast, did very little. Desire did not improve simply because someone wished to be in charge.
More quietly disruptive: one partner’s power did not reduce the other’s sexual satisfaction. Influence was not zero-sum. Couples frequently experienced power simultaneously.
This dovetails with John Gottman’s longitudinal findings on marital stability, particularly his observation that marriages fare better when husbands accept influence from their wives. Relationships did not deteriorate because women had influence. They deteriorated when that influence was blocked—especially when men defensively resisted being moved.
Read erotically, not just morally, the implication sharpens.
A partner who cannot be influenced is difficult to desire with.
Taken together, this research supports a clinically important distinction: power as relational efficacy—the ability to matter and be responded to—stabilizes both emotional and sexual systems. Power as control, dominance, or rigidity does not.
Sexual desire, in this view, does not thrive on symmetry or submission.
It thrives on circulating influence—a relational environment in which both partners remain consequential.
The Larger Frame
Healthy sexual systems are not built on perfect balance.
They are built on reciprocal influence.
On the lived experience of being able to say:
I want this.
I can move the relationship.
You can move me too.
Power, properly understood, does not threaten intimacy.
It organizes it.
Final Thoughts
The opposite of erotic harm is not submission.
It is agency without fear.
Couples do not need less power.
They need circulating power—influence that moves, yields, and responds.
Gottman showed us that love survives when influence is accepted.
This research suggests sex does too.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Gottman, J. M. (1999). The marriage clinic: A scientifically based marital therapy. W. W. Norton & Company.
Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: Behavior, physiology, and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(2), 221–233.
Körner, R., & Schütz, A. (2025). Power and sexuality: Associations of experienced and desired power with sexual aspects of couples’ lives. The Journal of Sex Research. Advance online publication.