Marital sexual enjoyment and frustration of professional men

The psychological maturity, interpersonal, and marital attributes associated with the sexual pleasure and frustration of 59 married professional men, who had also been studied as adolescents, were examined by means of 10--12 hr of psychological tests, questionnaires, and interviews. The men's wives, closest friends, and colleagues also completed questionnaires about them. Masters and Johnson's hypothesis was confirmed that sexual pleasure is enhanced in psychologically mature and healthy men whose interpersonal relations are mature, whose relations with their spouses are marked by mutuality in fulfillment of each other's needs, and whose marriages are happy and satisfying. Increasing sexual frustration was associated, although not so consistently, with psychological unhealthiness, interpersonal immaturity, inadequate marital communication, and marital unhappiness. Degree of adult sexual pleasure and frustration was not reliably predicted by adolescent peraonality traits.