Sex and Happiness

Sex sells; particularly on the internet. And reports of sex research is practically guaranteed to get widespread internet coverage; both as news articles and as blog material.

Lately, the hot finding is that researchers found a correlation between frequency of sex and reported happiness. Couples who engage in sexual relations at least once a week tend to be happier than those who do so less often. As a matter of fact, they found that having sex at least once a week tended to be as effective in relating with being happier as having an increase of $10,000 in income!

So making love more often leads to more happiness? Not so fast!

Technically, the research describes a relationship between sex and happiness; it does not state necessarily what causes what. Does happiness result from more sex; or are happier people more likely to desire sex? Age of the persons involved can play a part. Older people, while likely to be happier, engage in sexual behavior somewhat less often. And often the responsibilities associated with older age status (parenting, etc.) may make opportunities for sex and energy less available.

Moreover, while the original findings stated that about once a week was associated with more happiness, some writers ran with that and further misconstrued the results as implying that sex more than once a week results in less happiness. Nope; nothing like that was reported; only that there was no further increment in happiness. No decrement in happiness should accompany having sex more often! If the regular night for coupling is Saturday and it's only Tuesday, no need to wait until the weekend if both are willing at the present moment! And there are different ways of doing sex; and variety is the spice of life. Somehow, this was twisted into another case of getting results with a bare minimum of effort!

Anyway, people themselves at any age might have differences in libidos and how they enjoy the experience. The joy of experiencing a close bond is a strong motivator in itself.

An interesting factoid is that men are maximally ready to have sex in the morning, say between 6 and 9 A.M. Women tend to be maximally eager late, around 11 P.M. to 1 A.M.  This can be worked out.