How often should a happy couple have sex?

It’s true that the “happier couples have more sex” theory has gotten a lot of play, but earlier this month, a study at Carnegie Mellon found that nobody actually bothered to look into whether the correlation between sex and happiness was a chicken/egg thing rather than cause and effect.

They split 64 couples, with various sexual frequencies, into two groups. They asked Group A to keep their sex lives the same, and Group B to have twice as much sex as they usually did.

To the researchers’ surprise, by the end of the study, Group B’s energy and enthusiasm had declined, and moreover, the sex “wasn’t much fun.” Couples are happiest, it seems, when they have sex exactly as often as they want to, without being forced into an upswing For Science—or, for that matter, by passive-aggressive shaming from their own
Jennas, who never seem to factor in the real world when it comes to the frequency of sex in a committed relationship.

To put it more colorfully, as a recent-newlywed friend Laura tweeted at me when I did a call-out for this piece:
“Is this supposed to be not a lot of sex? Because if so, I need to have a sit down with my vagina.”

The continued emphasis on sexual quantity over quality for committed couples is the reason that women like Christine, 26, are self-conscious about the frequency of sex in their perfectly happy relationships. “When I’ve discussed my frequency with friends who are having sex more frequently than I am, I have felt pitied (in the nicest way possible).”

“Happiness begets sex, not the other way around.”

When she and her boyfriend moved in together three years ago, they went from having sex every night to once a week, occasionally twice.

“Sometimes I reassure myself this is totally normal, and other times I get pretty bummed out about it,” explains Christine.

“A lot of the time I blame myself. Like, ‘Oh, you just HAD to finish the entire bottle of wine. You just HAD to pass out on the couch.’”

Ultimately, however, she says, “There are a lot of positive things about our relationship that seem to have out-shined any strain the infrequency initially put on our relationship.”

Echoing Carnegie Mellon’s findings, she adds, “When [the sex] first decreased, we talked about it and kept telling each other we’d try harder to have sex more often. I’m not sure if we both gave up or just got used to the infrequency.”