But, for better or worse, the study results also mean that you probably can’t hide dissatisfaction with your sex life well, either.

The researchers surveyed members of 84 heterosexual married or cohabiting Canadian couples on their own levels of sexual satisfaction, as well as what they perceived their partners’ to be. They also looked at relationship happiness, sexual communication and general emotion-recognition ability. First, ratings of sexual satisfaction from each partner were compared with the other, to see how couples stacked up.

“On average, both men and women did well,” said Erin Fallis, study author and psychology graduate student of the University of Waterloo in Ontario. “They had, overall, accurate and unbiased perceptions of their partners’ sexual satisfaction.”

Those who rated themselves as having good sexual communication were, predictably, better at judging their lovers’ pleasure levels. But even for those whose verbal communication was lacking, some made up for it by being naturally adept at reading human emotion. Emotion recognition ability was tested by showing subjects photos of people’s eyes and having them guess which emotion the look was conveying.

Also, judging a partner’s pleasure correctly may arise from natural compatibility rather than relationship longevity, since accuracy was independent of how long the couple had been together.

The study was published online Thursday in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Some studies in the past had hinted that men overestimate how much satisfaction their female partners get from sex. One survey from 1992, by pioneering sociologist Edward O. Laumann of the University of Chicago, found that 43.5 percent of men reported that their partners always had an orgasm, but only 28.6 percent of women self-reported having orgasms.

A more recent study published in 2010 found a similar