what to do if you have sent a sext and regret it
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Smartphones have made it far easier for u.s. to stay in touch with relationship partners, even when we are geographically distant. Further, they have enabled us to convey messages which are sexual in nature—sexting.
Lenhart (2009) defined sexting as sending ''sexually suggestive, nude, or nearly nude photos or videos of yourself'' (p. xvi). Its significance as a form of romantic communication is evidenced by the fact that effectually 75 percent of young adults claim to have engaged in sexting. Having said that, they are more probable to transport sexually explicit texts than to send nude pictures. However, the definition covers sending both photos and letters.
Questions therefore ascend as to how the mode in which nosotros communicate by telephone can bear upon our relationships: What does the fashion in which we use our phones to stay in touch say about us?
Is There an Association Between Sexting and Zipper Style?
One possibility is that in that location is a relationship between sexting and the fashion in which nosotros go fastened to or interact with our relationship partners. Hazan & Shaver (1987) identified three wide ways in which we may get attached.
- Securely attached people describe their relationships as involving happiness, friendship, and trust. "I find it relatively piece of cake to get close to others, and I am comfy depending on them, and having them depend on me. I don't often worry about existence abandoned, or almost someone getting close to me."
- Avoidant individuals draw a fear of closeness. "I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others. I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets likewise shut, and frequently love partners desire me to exist more intimate than I experience comfy being."
- Anxious ambivalent people describe a dearest life total of emotional extremes, obsessive preoccupations, the desire for union with the partner, desire for reciprocation with the partner, and beloved at starting time sight. "I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn't really dear me or desire to stay with me. I want to merge completely with another person, and this want sometimes scares people away."
The research on sexting and zipper style has indicated that those who transport sexually explicit messages and attempt to initiate sex through texting also tend to display either avoidant or anxious zipper styles with romantic partners. For example, Drouin and Langraff (2012) suggested that individuals who possess anxious zipper styles engage in sexting as a hyperactivating strategy, which means they are compulsively seeking proximity and protection. Yet, people with an avoidant attachment fashion use sexting as a deactivating strategy—sexting meets their sexual needs, only at the aforementioned time keeps their partner at a distance.
Sexting in Established Relationships
The research on sexting in relationships has focused primarily on adolescents and younger adults, merely what does sexting say virtually people in more than established relationships? A contempo study by McDaniel and Drouin (2015) investigated sexting behavior in married couples, looking specifically at:
- The frequency at which they sexted
- Attachment way and sexting
- Relationship satisfaction and sexting
In this report, the researchers measured attachment in romantic relationships using the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale—Brusque Class (Wei, Russell, Mallinckrodt & Vogel, 2007). The scale uses items to measure attachment anxiety (e.one thousand., ''I need a lot of reassurance that I am loved by my partner''), and zipper avoidance (eastward.g., ''I attempt to avoid getting too close to my partner'').
The Prevalence of Sexting in Established Relationships
The researchers found that those in established relationships do engage in sexting, but the levels of reported sexting (messages and pictures) is lower than those for young adults. For case, only effectually 12 percent of people in established relationships engaged in sexting. This could be because those in established relationships are less probable to take part in risky behavior than younger adults, or are at to the lowest degree more than probable to consider the risks of a third political party seeing their sexts.
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Additionally, information technology is possible that those in established relationships are less probable to exist conversant with the phenomenon of sexting, having established their intimate relationships before its advent. Finally, information technology is possible that because established couples tend to accept less frequent sex than younger counterparts, the fact that they send fewer sexts may be indicative of the fact that they take less sexual activity anyway.
Sexting and Attachment Mode in Established Relationships
The next step in the study was to categorize sexting behavior into either sending nude or semi-nude photos, or sending sexy text messages. They then looked at the relationship between the sending of each of these in relation to relationship attachment styles.
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They found that for females, sending nude or semi-nude photos was related to higher degrees of avoidant zipper, while for males, sending nude or semi-nude photographs was related to broken-hearted attachment. Nonetheless, they constitute no relationship between attachment style and the sending of sexy text letters for males or females.
Is Sexting Associated with Human relationship Satisfaction?
An earlier study by Parker, Blackburn, Perry, and Hawks (2013) investigated the relationship between sexting and relationship well-existence in married and cohabiting couples. They found that those who reported greater relationship well-existence were more probable to have sent some kind of sexual message to their partner.
Conversely, McDaniel and Drouin (2015) found no relationship betwixt the sending of sexy messages and human relationship satisfaction for either males or females. Even so, they did find that sending nude or semi-nude photos was related to higher levels of relationship ambiguity (i.e., uncertainty about the relationship), and that this was the case for males and females.
All in all, the way in which we ship sext messages reveals more about and our relationships and ourselves than we may think.
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References
Drouin, M., & Landgraff, C. (2012). Texting, sexting, zipper, and intimacy in
higher students' romantic relationships. Computers in Homo Behavior, 28,
444–449. Hazan, C. & Shaver, P. (1987) Romantic Beloved conceptualized equally an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511-524. Lenhart, A. (2009) 'Teens and sexting: How and why modest teens are sending sexually suggestive nude or nigh nude images via text messaging'. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved from <http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/Teens-and-exting.aspx>. McDaniel, B. T. & Drouin, Grand. (2015) 'Sexting among married couples: Who is doing information technology, and are they more than satisfied?' Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking, 18(eleven), i-7. Parker, T. Southward., Blackburn, K. M., Perry, M. S., & Hawks. J. Grand. (2013) 'Sexting as an intervention: relationship satisfaction and motivation considerations.' American Journal of Family Therapy, 41, (ane) i–12. Wei, M., Russell, D.Due west., Mallinckrodt. B., & Vogel, D. 50. (2007) 'The experiences in shut human relationship calibration (ECR)-brusque grade: reliability, validity, and gene structure.' Journal of Personality Assessment, 88, 187–204.
Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-digitally/201601/what-your-sexting-really-reveals
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