How many times in a week should people who are married have sex? For many people, the more sex you have with your spouse, the happier you would be in your marriage. However, a new study found couples who have sex every night, despite being too tired, too stressed and too distracted, are no happier than those who have sex just once a week.
The researchers from the University of Toronto-Mississauga found this after analysing the results of surveys from more than 30,000 Americans, collected over 40 years in three different projects.
Amy Muise, lead researcher of the study and a social psychologist and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto-Mississauga, in a pressrelease explained: “Our findings suggest that it’s important to maintain an intimate connection with your partner, but you don’t need to have sex every day as long as you’re maintaining that connection.”
After analysing the results of the surveys, the researchers found that more sex does not necessarily mean more happiness. The happiness levels increased among couples who had sex once a week, but there was no rise in satisfaction levels beyond this frequency.
“People often think that more money and more sex equal more happiness, but this is only true up to a point,” Muise said. “It’s important to maintain an intimate connection with your partner without putting too much pressure on engaging in sex as frequently as possible.”
The researchers want you to understand that the reason why you’re having sex matters more than how often you’re having sex. Having sex because you want to is better than doing so because you feel you have to.
In addition, these findings were specific to people in romantic relationships and in fact, there was no association between sexual frequency and happiness for single people.
Dr Muise explained that it is possible that for single people, the link between sex and happiness is dependent on a number of factors such as the relationship context in which the sex occurs and how comfortable people are with sex outside of relationship.
The findings are published in the journal Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
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