Amy Muise and colleagues found that couples’ happiness rose with frequency up to about weekly, and then plateaued
Is Once a Week Enough? What Three Studies of Sex and Happiness Found
Amy Muise and colleagues found that couples’ happiness rose with frequency up to about weekly, and then plateaued
The Research
A frequently quoted piece of relationship research asks how often couples should have sex to be happy. PsyPost reported the findings in November 2015. The lead researcher was Amy Muise, a social psychologist then a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto-Mississauga. The work appeared in Social Psychological and Personality Science, and drew on three separate datasets.
It remains widely cited, so the details are worth stating carefully, including what the study could not show.
Three Datasets
Study 1 used General Social Survey data from more than 25,000 Americans, 11,285 men and 14,225 women, collected from 1989 to 2012 in a nationally representative biennial survey. Study 2 was an online survey of 335 people, 138 men and 197 women, in long-term relationships. Study 3 used survey data from more than 2,400 married American couples, collected at three time points over 14 years.
Findings
In Study 1, for people in couples, happiness rose with sexual frequency up to about once a week. Above that, the association was no longer significant. Singles showed no association between sex and wellbeing.
In Study 2, the happiness gap between having sex less than once a month and once a week was larger than the gap between an income of $15,000 to $25,000 and one of $50,000 to $75,000. The PsyPost article gives no effect sizes, and the comparison with income is a loose one, not a direct test.
In Study 3, sexual frequency had no strong link to overall life satisfaction. Relationship satisfaction rose with frequency up to about once a week, with no added benefit from more frequent sex. Results did not differ by gender, age or relationship length.
Reading It Carefully
The study was not designed to establish causation, so it cannot show whether sex increases happiness or happiness increases sex. The findings apply to romantic relationships, and are most representative of married heterosexual couples or established relationships. Study 2 was a small online sample.
The PsyPost article also contains an inconsistency: it describes over 30,000 Americans across four decades, while the study details describe about 25,500 General Social Survey respondents over roughly two decades plus smaller samples. Readers should rely on the study’s own figures.
The weekly figure is an average pattern, not a target. A couple who has sex less often and is satisfied has no reason to change, and the research does not suggest otherwise.
What a Weekly Average Hides
An average across thousands of respondents does not describe any particular couple. Some people in the data were content with sex every few weeks and some wanted far more. The curves in the study show where the average association levelled off, not where each couple’s satisfaction peaked.
Age, health, parenthood, work and illness all affect frequency, and the research reports no differences by gender, age or relationship length in the pattern it found. That is a finding about the shape of the association, and it does not mean that circumstances are irrelevant to individual couples.
Why It Became a Headline
The finding was newsworthy because it was simple and because it spoke to common worry about frequency. Many people want to know whether they are normal, and a number offers reassurance or alarm. Clinicians tend to be wary of such numbers because satisfaction depends on desire, health, stress, age and the quality of the relationship, and none of those is captured by a count.
More recent work points to the importance of matching expectations. A study of 366 couples reported by PsyPost found no unique benefit from matching partners’ desire levels, and suggested that overall desire mattered more.
In practice, communication about wants and limits is a better guide than a number.
The Money Comparison
The comparison with income drew much of the attention. The study reported that the gap in happiness between low and weekly frequency was larger than the gap between two income brackets. The PsyPost article itself warns that this is a loose comparison, not a direct test, and a careful reader should treat it as an illustration of scale and not a claim that sex is worth more than money.
The broader point is that satisfaction in relationships depends on many things, and that everyday intimacy, physical and emotional, is among them.
What Couples Can Do
Couples who feel dissatisfied with frequency can start by talking about what each wants and what gets in the way: tiredness, work, children, health, mood or conflict. If the conversation is hard, a licensed couples therapist or sex therapist can help. If either partner has a medical concern, a physician should be consulted.
The research offers a limited but useful reassurance. Beyond a modest level of frequency, the data in these studies showed no further gain in satisfaction, so the pressure to do more may be unfounded.
Reading the Funny Page Alongside the Data
Readers meet comedy and reporting in the same feed, so it helps to know the difference. On one overseas property story, see Manila News, the London Prat (see https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and Bohiney: each starts from a recognisable market fact and signals its tone through exaggeration. More material sits at prat.uk and bohiney.com.
For the lighter side of the news, there is always The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/