Sexual Quality of Life and Marital Adjustment in Women with Endometriosis: A Case–Control Study

The aim of this study was to determine the quality of sexual life and marital adjustment in women with endometriosis. This case–control study was conducted between March and September 2023 at the gynecology outpatient clinic of a teaching and research hospital. The study included 132 women with endometriosis (case group) and 137 healthy women (control group). Data were collected using the “Participant Description Questionnaire”, “Visual Analogue Scale”, the “Sexual Quality of Life Questionnaire-Female (SQLQ-F)” and the “Marital Adjustment Scale (MAS)”. The Mann–Whitney U-test, Kruskal–Wallis test and Spearman correlation test were used in the comparison of variables. The SQLQ-F total median score was 82.0 in the case group and 96.0 in the control group. In addition, the MAS total median score was 44.0 in the case group and 45.0 in the control group. In the case group, 80.3% of women reported dyspareunia (mean dyspareunia VAS score: 6.8 ± 3.3). While there was a statistically significant difference in the average SQLQ-F scores between the case and control groups (p 0.05). There was a positive and statistically significant relationship between SQLQ-F total scores and MAS total scores of all participants (p < 0.01). In the case group, there was a statistically significant negative relationship between women's SQLQ-F total scores and the severity of dyspareunia (p < 0.01). The quality of sexual life in women with endometriosis was lower compared to healthy women. As the severity of dyspareunia increases in women with endometriosis, their quality of sexual life decreases. Additionally, it was observed that as the quality of sexual life increases in women, marital adjustment also increases. Similar content being viewed by others Data Availability No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

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Not applicable. Funding The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article. Author information Authors and Affiliations Contributions H.A.T. and N.D. contributed to the study conception and design. Data collection was performed by H.A.T. and S.S.K. Statistical analysis was performed by H.A.T. The first draft of the manuscript was written by H.A.T and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Corresponding author Ethics declarations Conflict of interest No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s) Additional information Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Rights and permissions Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. About this article Cite this article Arslan Tarus, H., Demirci, N., Karakuş, S. et al. Sexual Quality of Life and Marital Adjustment in Women with Endometriosis: A Case–Control Study. Sex Disabil 44, 18 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11195-025-09930-w Received: Accepted: Published: Version of record: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11195-025-09930-w