Sexual Communication and Satisfaction in Young Adults’ Monogamous and Consensually Nonmonogamous Relationships

Bibby, Emily S.
Davila, Joanne

Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University

Hannah C. Williamson served as action editor.

All research questions, hypotheses, and analytic methods were preregistered prior to viewing the data set on the Open Science Framework; see at https://osf.io/5merq. All data, code, and study materials are available upon request to the authors. Some data and ideas in this article were presented at a conference. This research was supported with funding provided to Joanne Davila by Stony Brook University and with funding provided to Emily S. Bibby by the John Neale Award, Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University.

Emily S. Bibby played a lead role in conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, project administration, and writing–original draft and a supporting role in funding acquisition. Joanne Davila played a lead role in funding acquisition, resources, supervision, and writing–review and editing and a supporting role in conceptualization, formal analysis, and methodology.

Emily S. Bibby, Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook, NY 11790, United States [email protected]

Received November 4, 2024

revised April 16, 2025

Accepted April 17, 2025

Journal of Family Psychology 39(5):p 603-613, August 2025. | DOI: 10.1037/fam0001356

Despite the growing body of literature examining sexual communication in romantic relationships, diverse relationship structures have been severely underrepresented. This study examined differences in sexual communication and multiple sexual and relational outcome variables between people in monogamous and consensually nonmonogamous relationships. Participants included 576 young adults (ages 18–35 years old) in monogamous or consensually nonmonogamous relationships with at least one committed partner. Participants were asked to complete sexual communication as well as various commonly used sexual/relational outcome measures regarding a partner. Results of t tests and linear regression analyses suggested people in consensually nonmonogamous relationships had greater sexual communication quality compared with people in monogamous relationships. There were no additional differences detected in any of the other study variables. Significant associations between sexual communication and sexual and relational outcome variables were replicated and no differences in these associations based on relationship structure emerged. Implications and directions for future research are addressed.