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Everything nowadays seems to have a proper label — and symbiosexuality is the latest for a sexual phenomenon.
A new study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior looks at an individual’s attraction to established couples.
But it’s not so much about the sex, but rather, the energy of a desired couple — and not the individuals themselves — that makes them so bewitching.
Researchers out of Seattle University studied more than 350 participants who reported feeling a romantic and sexual attraction to a “third force” or “synergy” between a dating or married duo.
“We need to rethink the nature of human attraction and desire as only one-to-one experiences,” Sally Johnston, an adjunct professor of anthropology and sociology who conducted the study, told PsyPost.
“As part of the polyamorous community, I have heard people talk openly about experiencing attraction to established couples.”
After discovering that sexual and romantic relationships between single people and couples was “largely ignored in social and academic discourse” and that they received a lot of negative attention from polyamorous communities, Johnston admitted she wanted to learn more about the “understudied attraction.”
Johnston used data from The Pleasure Study, which surveyed 373 participants about aspects of their sexual and gender identity.
Of those participants, nearly 40% reported that they felt feelings of attraction to two people and their relationship together.
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It should be noted that the survey participants are not representative of the wider population, skewing heavily towards white, middle-class, and university graduates with more than 90% identifying as queer and 87.5% saying they are polyamorous.
But Johnston insists she found consistent evidence of a previously unstudied sexuality following interviews with 34 of the study participants.
“There is a diverse population of people who experience symbiosexual attraction, an attraction to the energy, multidimensionality, and power shared between people in relationships,” Johnston said.
Of those surveyed, 35% said they felt this attraction sometimes or often, while 51% said they had felt this attraction a few times, with one participant saying they were attracted to the “cohesiveness” and “interplay” between couples, while another simply believed the “ideal dynamic might be myself and a couple.”
Those who identified as symbiosexual were extroverted, desire a lot of intimacy, care and attention, and were less likely to experience jealousy.
Johnston acknowledged that more research is needed to investigate the prevalence of this sexual orientation in the general public.
She also noted that symbiosexual attraction and how it could affect people’s mental health and relationship satisfaction needs to be further explored.
“I find the idea of human attraction going beyond typical one-on-one experiences really intriguing,” relationship expert Callisto Adamshe told The Toronto Sun.
“Symbiosexuality, where people are drawn to the energy and dynamics between couples, highlights how attraction can be more about the relational vibe than just individual traits.”
She added: It makes me think about how complex and multifaceted desire is, and how we often underestimate the power of connections that exist between people, not just with them.”