**Participants and Procedure**
The data for this study was collected as part of a larger study on touch and sexual experiences in romantic relationships. Participants were recruited from the Greater Toronto Area through online advertisements posted on Craigslist and Kijiji as well as flyers posted in locations around the GTA. In order to be eligible to participate, participants had to be over the age of 18, be currently involved in a sexual relationship, and have been living with their romantic partner for at least two years. Eligible couples emailed a research assistant, who then spoke on the phone with each member of the couple separately in order to gain consent to participate. During this phone call, participants were asked some basic questions (e.g. “Where did you and you partner meet?”) in order to verify that they were really a couple.
Data was collected from a total of 104 couples (N = 208 participants). Six couples were excluded because one or both partners did not complete the background survey, resulting in a final sample of 98 couples (n = 196 participants). Eighty-nine of the participants (44%) reported being in a cohabitation relationship with their partner, 13 (7%) were engaged, and 94 (48%) were married.
Participants began by completing several individual difference measures, most of which are unrelated to the current investigation in a background survey.
**Measures**
Each day for 28 days, participants completed several questionnaires about events that had taken place in their relationship that day. Participants answered five questions from the Global Measure of Sexual Satisfaction (GMSEX; Lawrance & Byers, 1998) to measure their sexual satisfaction. Items were rated on 7-point bipolar scales: bad–good, unpleasant– pleasant, negative–positive, unsatisfying–satisfying, worthless–valuable (M = 4.95 SD = 1.63, α = .98). Next, participants answered seven questions from the Perceived Relationship Quality Components Inventory (PRQC; Fletcher, Simpson, & Thomas, 2000) designed to assess their overall
relationship quality. All items began with the question stem “Today, with regard to my relationship, I felt:” Items were, satisfied, committed, connected, passionate, love for my partner, I could count on my partner, and understood, validated & cared for by my partner. Items were rated on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 = not at all to 7 = a lot (M = 5.62 SD = 1.38, α = .95). In order to assess whether participants had made any sexual comparisons that day, participants responded to the item: “Sometimes in our relationships, we think about how our sex life compares to that of other people. At any point today, did you compare your sex life to the sex life of anyone else?” If participants did report making a sexual comparison that day, they responded to the item “When you made this comparison, how well were you doing relative to this other person?” on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 = I was doing much worse than the other person to 7 = I was doing much better than the other person with a midpoint of 4 = The other person and I were doing equally well (M = 3.14, SD = 1.85). On day 28, participants also completed additional measures of individual well-being, satisfaction with life, sexual satisfaction, and partner appreciation. Individual well-being was measured with a 39-item version of Ryff’s (1989) Scales of Psychological Well-being (SPWB) validated by van Dierendonck (2004). Items were rated on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 = Disagree strongly to 7 = Strongly agree.
