If we are to believe the results of the new study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, less is indeed more. It turns out having sex just once a week is enough to keep couples happy, rather than doing the deed more frequently.
- Shocker: more sex might not mean more happiness
- The study is based on more than 30,000 Americans being survey about happiness levels
- Takeaway: quality is more important than quantity
The study conducted by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology is the first to go against the popular belief that more sex results in more happiness. The research is based on surveying over 30,000 Americans for over four decades.
According to senior researcher Amy Muise, the connection between increasing happiness and more frequent sex loses its significance beyond more than once a week. A psychologist and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto-Mississauga, Muise added that while it is important to maintain a constant intimate connection with your partner, you don’t everyday sex to do that.
The surveys focused on romantically involved people – especially married heterosexual couples. As far as single individuals were concerned, researchers couldn’t find a connection between sexual frequency and their well-being. That might be because the sex-happiness connection for single people is often dependent on other factors, such as the comfort with sex outside of relationship or the lack thereof.
The results showed married couples tend to make love once a week, on average, with virtually no difference in age or gender; this comes against the well-known stereotype that men want more sex than women and that older couples tend to have less sex.
Researchers were surprised to see that happiness is linked tighter to sex than money. People often think more sex or more money will make them happier – but that connection is true to a point.
More than 330 participants responded to the researchers’ online survey; they found couples who had sex less than once monthly were significantly less happy than those having sex once weekly. The same gap was found between people with an income of $15,000-25,000 versus those who earned $50,000 to $75,000 annually.
On the other end of the advice-giving spectrum is an older study conducted by Prof. George Loewenstein of the Carnegie Mellon University. Encouraging 32 couples to double their rate of sexual intercourse and then self-assess their daily levels of happiness led to interesting results.
Prof. Loewensteing found that an increase of 40 percent in sex made the respondents less energetic, less happy, and less satisfied with sex.
Image Source: New Love Times
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