Is Masturbation Replacing Sex in Relationships?

Source: Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash

People's reasons for masturbating are many and varied. For example, whether solo or partnered, people may engage in self-pleasure for stress relief, tension reduction, pleasure, to explore their bodies, and/or to assist in falling asleep. Like any other sexual behavior, the motives behind masturbation are rarely one-dimensional.

However, when someone is in a romantic relationship, masturbation doesn't occur in a vacuum and typically exists alongside partnered sex. Masturbation might happen before or after sex, instead of sex, or it may happen entirely independent of sex.

This raises an interesting question: In romantic relationships, does masturbation tend to serve more of a complementary or compensatory function? In other words, does masturbation tend to serve as an enhancement to an otherwise active and exciting sex life? Or does self-pleasure tend to take center stage when partnered sex is lacking?

Sex researchers have long debated this question.

Complementary vs. Compensatory Masturbation

To the extent that masturbation serves a complementary role, this means that it goes hand-in-hand (so to speak) with partnered sex. In other words, the people who masturbate the most also have the most sex. This could reflect greater sexual openness or a higher level of baseline desire, but it could also mean that when you have a really active and engaging sex life, that might stimulate even more desire for self-pleasure.

By contrast, when masturbation serves a compensatory function, that means it's filling in a gap in your sex life. Under this view, the people who masturbate the most are the ones who aren't having much in the way of sex. Masturbation becomes a substitute for unmet sexual needs, such as being in a sexless relationship or experiencing a sexual desire discrepancy.

Until recently, researchers believed that these masturbatory functions differed by gender.

Compensatory for Men, Complementary for Women?

It was long thought that men and women in relationships used masturbation in different ways.

For men, masturbation was largely seen as compensatory. Because men tend to report more spontaneous desire and are more likely to say they wish they were having more sex, it was thought that men would turn to masturbation more often as a means of making up the difference. Consistent with this, some studies have found that frequency of partnered sex and frequency of masturbation are inversely associated for men, meaning that when men are having less sex, they're masturbating more.

However, for women, masturbation has typically been seen as complementary. What the research showed is that women who were masturbating more often were also the ones reporting the most frequent partnered sex and the highest sexual satisfaction. In other words, masturbation wasn't replacing sex; rather, it was part of a broader pattern of high sexual engagement and desire.

These patterns were often interpreted through a gendered lens of sexual desire, with men's being seen as emerging in a more spontaneous, urgent way, while women's was viewed as more responsive and sensitive to context. From this vantage point, it made sense that masturbation would be more compensatory for men and more complementary for women.

But is that really true? Not all studies have reported consistent findings, and we know that sexual norms and behaviors have changed a lot, which is why a new study sought to revisit the standard narrative.

Is Masturbation Compensatory for Everyone?

In a recent study published in the Journal of Sex Research, scientists analyzed multiple waves of data from the British National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal). These are large, nationally representative surveys conducted periodically that track changes in sexual attitudes and behaviors over time.

The researchers sought to look at changes in masturbation prevalence and how it is associated with demographic factors, as well as how masturbatory frequency was linked to partnered activity. Their findings add a wrinkle to the discussion.

When the researchers looked at the association between how often people were masturbating and how much sex they would like to be having, they found the same pattern across men and women: The people masturbating the most were the ones who weren’t having as much sex as they’d like to be having. In other words, regardless of gender, masturbation seems to serve a compensatory function when one’s sex life isn’t meeting expectations.

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They also found that more frequent masturbation was associated with having sexual difficulties (or having a partner with more sexual difficulties), as well as feelings of distress or dissatisfaction with one’s sex life. This suggests that both men and women tend to turn toward masturbation to manage desire when their relationship circumstances don’t allow for frequent sex.

Of course, this is not to say that people in relationships only masturbate when they aren’t having as much sex as they’d like, or that masturbation doesn’t serve a complementary role for anyone. Far from it!

So What Changed?

Part of the story may be due to changing sexual norms around female self-pleasure. The researchers did find that women today are masturbating more than they were in the past, which may reflect more societal discourse about women’s pleasure, not to mention a booming sex toy market designed with women in mind. As the taboo around women’s self-pleasure declines, women may not just be masturbating more, but potentially utilizing masturbation in different ways than they did before.

At the same time, research from all around the world shows that we’re in a “sex recession.” As a whole, people are simply having a lot less sex than we used to, which may be triggering an increase in the use of masturbation as a form of compensation for the sex we aren’t having.

Takeaways and Conclusions

With all of that said, it is important to emphasize that just because someone in a relationship is masturbating, this does not necessarily mean that the relationship is sexless or that they’re sexually dissatisfied. Again, masturbation is done for multiple reasons and serves several functions in our lives.

Also, it’s worth noting that we’re talking about overall trends in the data. What happens at the individual level can be very different. For many people in relationships, masturbation may have nothing to do with the amount of sex they’re having (or want to have). For example, sometimes it’s more about self-care than anything.

None of this is to say that masturbation is the enemy or that it’s inherently bad for people in relationships to do it. It’s not.

However, a few things to take away from all of this are that: (1) the old narrative about masturbation only being compensatory for men doesn't seem to hold anymore, and (2) in an era where people are having a lot less sex than they used to, they’re masturbating more.