How often would you have sex? Everything chafing aside, one would think the more the merrier when it comes to getting busy.
Amy Muise, psychologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga did research on the relationship between sex and happiness: the happiest people tend to have sex only once a week!
Muise’s study, which examined data from 25,510 Americans ranging from 18 to 89 years old over the span of four decades, explored the relationship between frequency of sex and reports of happiness.
She found that, yes, there’s a linear relationship between amount of sex and happiness, but only to a point.
It’s perhaps better described as a “curvilinear” relationship: people’s apparent satisfaction tends to level off after getting busy just once a week.
“Although more frequent sex is associated with greater happiness, this link was no longer significant at a frequency of more than once a week,”
Muise wrote. “Our findings suggest that it’s important to maintain an intimate connection with your partner, but you don’t need to have sex everyday as long as you’re maintaining that connection.”
This conclusion is surprising enough to raise an eyebrow, certainly, but it fits with other research on the subject. A recent study published in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization also suggests that there is, indeed, such a thing as too much sex.
In that experiment, couples were forced to increase their sexual activity, but reported no additional happiness or satisfaction after doing so.