Problem
You think that having more sex would make you happier.
Reality
You’d also be wrong about that, providing that you’re in a monogamous relationship, according to a study in the Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation.
Method
Researchers had 128 healthy people between the ages of thirty-five to sixty-five who were in married heterosexual couples. The experimental group was told to double their weekly sexual intercourse frequency. The control group didn’t receive any such instructions.
Each person completed surveys throughout the test regarding overall health, happiness level, the frequency of sex, type of sex, and enjoyableness of sex.
Results
People who doubled their sex frequency actually had a small decrease in happiness.
The Takeaway
Take heart, though: it isn’t all bad. Researchers think that the problem is this:
“The desire to have sex decreases much more quickly than the enjoyment of sex once it’s been initiated. Instead of focusing on increasing sexual frequency to the levels they experienced at the beginning of a relationship, couples may want to work on creating an environment that sparks their desire and makes the sex that they do have even more fun.”
In other words: people think they want more sex, but what they really want is better sex. Which is something you can work on, although it probably won’t feel like work.
