How many times should you have sex per day

How much sex makes people happiest? Is there a magic number of times per week the average couple should aim for to keep both partners happy in bed and out?

At some point in life, many couples wonder and ask themselves, “What is the average amount of sex that other couples are having?” And though the answer is not perfectly clear, sex therapists have said many things about this very topic.

When couples stop having sex, their relationships become vulnerable to anger, detachment, infidelity and, ultimately, divorce.

Traditionally, therapists say sex counts for about a quarter of the total happiness of a relationship.

But new studies reveal all sorts of interesting – and contradictory – evidence on how much sex contributes to long-term relationship satisfaction. Here’s the latest on who’s happiest doing what.

According to David Schnarch, PhD, through a study conducted with more than 20,000 couples, he found that only 26% of couples are hitting the once-a-week mark, with the majority of the respondents reporting sex only once or twice a month, or less!

If you’re under 25 or in the first throes of your relationship, you’ll put a mental tick beside this one and go back to finding out the latest on Kim and Kanye.

But if you’re a long-term couple or older, the idea of daily sex will probably seem, well, unlikely.

However, another study, printed in The University of Chicago Press about 10 years ago, stated that married couples are having sex about seven times a month, which is a little less than twice a week. And in a third study, it was reported that out of the 16,000 adults interviewed, the older participants were having sex about 2 to 3 times per month, while younger participants said they were having sex about once a week.

A few years ago, books like 365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy grabbed the headlines, chronicling what happened when a long-term couple agreed to have sex every single day, (pretty much) no excuses allowed.

The couple claimed at the end of their sex-fuelled year, they felt happier, less angry and less stressed. Since then, hundreds of journalists and other couples have taken the challenge – with varying success.

Daily sex is a big ask for most busy people and more sex isn’t necessarily a good thing.

One study that asked couples having sex about six times a month to double the frequency had a disastrous effect on their sex lives. They enjoyed sex less and were in worse moods than those who stuck to their norm.

(Ask any couple trying for a baby: there’s nothing like having to have sex to dampen the keenest participants!)

Most of us, sensibly, enjoy this level of frequency when young or at the start of relationships, then turn it down to more realistic levels.

COUPLES WHO HAVE SEX THREE TO FOUR TIMES A WEEK

A 2004 study found the more sex people had, the happier they felt (I told you the results were contradictory!).

The book, The Normal Bar, supports this finding.

Published in 2013 and written by three, well-respected US scholars (including sexologist Pepper Schwartz), it draws on thousands of surveys to find out what makes couples happy.

Three to four times a week was the perfect amount for prime levels of happiness, according to the authors.

If you don’t have children, are in the peak of health, going through a great time in your relationship, highly sexed and highly motivated, this could be your magic number.

COUPLES WHO HAVE SEX ONCE A WEEK

The reality is, this is the category most of us fit into.

If forced to generalise about how often the ‘average’ couple have sex, once a week is probably the best estimate you’re going to get – far lower than the often banded about figure of 2.5 times a week.

The most recent reputable data on Britain’s bedtime habits (NATSAL, 2013) reported most of us have sex around five times a month. The good news is, there’s now research to prove weekly sex isn’t the ‘failure’ lots of couples think it is.

A sizeable US study done earlier this year (of 2,400 married couples) found although couples who had more sex said they were happier, the benefit levelled off at once a week.

Couples who had sex four or more times a week weren’t any happier than those who did it weekly. Why does this figure hit the jackpot? Because it’s a realistic goal.

It allows you to find a time when both of you are feeling relaxed enough to become aroused but is often enough to stop the awful pressure couples feel when there’s been a sex drought.

The longer you go without sex, the more the pressure is on to have sex for longer next time.

But if you can’t find time for a quickie, how do you find time and energy for a two-hour marathon session that’s also got to be fantastic to make up for not having it for ages?

COUPLES WHO DON’T HAVE SEX – EVER

One in four couples over 50 don’t have any sex at all.

But far from complaining about it, the couples surveyed by Gransnet (634 users aged 51 to 58) said they felt extremely happy and satisfied in their sexless relationships with only 65 per cent rating sex as important.

There’s an important caveat here: this holds true when both partners are happy not having sex, not when just one person decides to take sex off the table.

But if you’ve both had an honest conversation and decided it’s simply not something you value any longer, sex doesn’t appear to be the ‘must have’ factor for a happy relationship that experts traditionally believed.

This can also be the case for couples under 50, who both have low or no sexual drive, and are happy not to have it.

Times readers may have read the excellent piece ‘Just good friends: can sexless marriages really survive?’ this weekend, complete with convincing first-hand testimonies from real-life couples whose relationships actually improved once they stopped having sex.

Another well-respected US study also found the biggest predictor for overall happiness for couples was the relationship connection not sex.

It’s still society’s view that couples who aren’t having sex are unhappy and clearly have problems – but that simply isn’t true.

One of the main reasons why couples stop having sex isn’t because their relationship has gone sour or they don’t fancy their partners, it’s because they’re so close, the relationship has stopped being sexual.

The closer you are, the more you describe yourself as ‘best friends’ or ‘soul mates’, the less likely you are to be turned on by your partner.

Feeling like sex is usually our motivation for having sex but if you think of your partner more as a friend, your brain subconsciously takes them out of the ‘someone who I have sex with ‘ basket and puts them into the ‘someone I cuddle with’ category.

‘Forget everything you’ve been told,’ says US sex therapist Ian Kerner, ‘Trust, familiarity, predictability, romance – are not the building blocks of desire.’

Novelty is what tricks the brain into producing the hormones it did at the start. If you’re happy with the brother/sister dynamic, fine. If you’re not, simply start by having sex once a week whether you feel like it or not.