In her study, Johnston challenges the traditional perception that human attraction and want are confined to one-on-one relationships. She first encountered the idea of symbiosexual relationships whereas researching the therapy of “unicorns” in polyamorous dynamics.VeryWellMind defines a unicorn as somebody who engages in intimacy with a pair however just isn’t concerned in different points of their relationship.
Johnston noticed that in these situations, the third companion is commonly mistreated, objectified, and excluded, regardless of the sexual advantages they create to the connection.
Her present analysis builds on The Pleasure Examine, a bigger initiative designed to discover numerous dimensions of gender, sexual orientation, relationship patterns, cultural backgrounds, training, and particular experiences with {couples}. The Pleasure Examine featured a survey with 65 questions masking a big selection of matters.
Johnston focused on responses from contributors who reported being attracted to a few as a unit, somewhat than to every particular person individually.
Out of 373 contributors in The Pleasure Examine, not less than 145 reported experiencing this type of attraction.
Most of those contributors had been white, middle-class college graduates, with over 90% figuring out as queer and 87.5% as polyamorous.
Nonetheless, Johnston emphasised, “There’s a various inhabitants of people that expertise symbiosexual attraction, which is a draw to the vitality, complexity, and shared energy inside relationships.”
Symbiosexual people are typically extroverted, extremely worth closeness, affection, and a spotlight and are much less more likely to expertise jealousy. Johnston is now increasing her analysis to look at the dynamics of symbiosexuality among the many basic inhabitants. “I hope that this work will scale back stigma in each monogamous and non-monogamous communities and broaden conceptualizations of want in sexuality research,” she advised PsyPost.
