Sex: More of It Doesn't Mean More Happiness, Study Finds

It is common belief that having more sex will lead to increased happiness - after all, it's a form of exercise, which gives you endorphins, helps you sleep better and reduces stress. However, surprising new research claims that more sex doesn't necessarily mean more happiness.

According to findings published in the journal Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, there could be many reasons why one might observe this positive relationship between sex and happiness.

Being happy in the first place, for example, might lead someone to have more sex, reffered to as "reverse causality," or being healthy might result in being both happier and having more sex.

In the first study to examine the causal connection between sexual frequency and happiness, Carnegie Mellon University researchers experimentally assigned some couples to have more sex than others, and observed both group's happiness over a 3-month period.

It turns out that simply having more sex did not make couples happier, in part because the increased frequency led to a decline in wanting for and enjoyment of sex.

Roughly 128 healthy individuals aged 35-65 who were in married male-female couples participated in the research. The researchers randomly assigned the couples to one of two groups. The first group received no instructions on sexual frequency. The second group was asked to double their weekly sexual intercourse frequency.

After answering a survey at the beginning, middle and end of the study, the research team realized that couples having more sex did experience an increase, but rather a small decrease in happiness. That's because couples instructed to have more sex reported lower sexual desire and a decrease in sexual enjoyment.

It wasn't that actually having more sex led to decreased wanting and liking for sex. Instead, it seemed to be just the fact that they were asked to do it, rather than initiating on their own.

"Perhaps couples changed the story they told themselves about why they were having sex, from an activity voluntarily engaged in to one that was part of a research study. If we ran the study again, and could afford to do it, we would try to encourage subjects into initiating more sex in ways that put them in a sexy frame of mind, perhaps with baby-sitting, hotel rooms or Egyptian sheets, rather than directing them to do so," lead researcher George Loewenstein explained in a statement.

Despite the study's results, Loewenstein continues to believe that most couples have too little sex for their own good, and thinks that increasing sexual frequency in the right ways can be beneficial.

"The desire to have sex decreases much more quickly than the enjoyment of sex once it's been initiated," noted Tamar Krishnamurti, one of the researchers. "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."

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