My research interests and experiences fall into two broad domains: health psychology and close relationships. As an undergraduate, I became curious about how psychology can help people prevent and cope with illness and promote physical and psychological well-being. During my graduate training I have become increasingly interested in various aspects of relationship functioning. Over time, it has been satisfying for me to see how these domains are interconnected, and how my research and clinical interests inform each other.

During my graduate studies at SFU under the supervision of Dr. Kim Bartholomew, my research interests have become focused on issues of attachment and relationship functioning. For my Master’s thesis I extended previous research by testing the validity of existing models of attachment in a community sample of gay men. I prepared my M.A. results, which are now under revision, for publication. I conducted two other health-related projects with the same sample of gay men, including a project funded by the BC Health Research Foundation, wherein I investigated how individual differences in adult attachment were associated with risky sexual behaviours.

As my interest in research related to sexual functioning in relationships developed, I became aware that much of the literature in this area is primarily descriptive and does not take the dyadic context of sexuality into consideration. Therefore, for my Ph.D., I chose to research the ways in which attachment orientation may be associated with reasons for engaging in sexual activity. By collaborating with Dr. Rebecca Cobb on the Transition to Marriage study, I am examining whether sexual motivation may mediate the relationship between attachment and sexual and marital satisfaction in a sample of newlywed couples. My dissertation builds upon existing research by considering both partners’ experiences, and by assessing not only participants’ own reasons for having sex but also their perceptions of their spouses’ sexual motives. In preparation for my Ph.D. research, I conducted a pilot project to refine existing measures of sexual motives.