On Frequency of Sex
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Eolanda stopped having sex with me. In non-mono couples this would be more of a disaster, and a better canary in the coal mine. But never has the idea of ‘one person not being able to satisfy all one’s needs so let’s keep multiple sex friends’ been more true than now, when my partner was failing in bed to be… well… anything at all really.
It was all the more devastating to mention this failing sex life in front of Amber who had all these stories about how her parents, who I gather weren’t traditionally sexually attractive, had plenty of sex still. They snuck away giggling for an hour of privacy, as soon as they arrived in whatever hotel room or villa they had booked with Amber and her brother. Amber and her brother were caught by their maid once with adult material which they’d found in the bottom drawer of their parents’ cabinet next to battery-powered, bright-coloured, silicone-coated contraptions they didn’t recognise. They were solid after 35 years.
I researched the area regarding physical, mental, and relationship health.
In a landmark study, researchers followed the antics of men in Caerphilly, South Wales, over a decade. They correlated each man’s reported sexual frequency at the outset with his health, controlling for age, class, drug use, blood pressure, and pre-existing heart disease. The result: men who had sex more than twice a week had roughly half the mortality rate of those who had sex once a month or less. As one clinician put it, that is an effect size “most pharmaceutical interventions would kill for”.
Swedish researchers followed elderly residents of Gothenburg and found a significant association between the cessation of sexual activity and death. A large American study tracked adults for 11 years and found that, as sexual frequency increased, the risk of dying from all causes steadily decreased. The conclusion was unambiguous: sexual activity is associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality. More recent, and intrusive research has found associations between regular sexual activity and lower rates of cancer, higher immunoglobulins count, and telomere length, a key cellular sign of ageing.
Physical exertion raises the heart rate, improves circulation, lowers LDL cholesterol, and keeps blood vessels flexible through exercise. Orgasms trigger a flood of oxytocin and endorphins that counteract cortisol, the stress hormone tied to inflammation, hypertension, and heart disease when chronically elevated. Managing chronic stress through sex is, in effect, a form of low-tech cardiac care.
Sex increases serotonin and dopamine, the neurotransmitters most associated with mood regulation and emotional stability. Studies consistently find that sexually active people report lower rates of depression and anxiety, higher life satisfaction, and greater daily positive affect.
The endorphin surge during sex can blunt headaches, menstrual cramps, and even some chronic pain conditions — a fact that undermines the classic excuse considerably.
What’s to be said of the dispositional effects of frequent coitus? A major study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that, while people who had sex at least weekly were happier than those who had sex less often, people who had sex more than once a week reported no additional gains in happiness or wellbeing. Once a week appears to be the threshold beyond which more stops mattering — at least for reported subjective happiness. This mirrors the well-known income-happiness curve: more is better up to a point, after which additional quantity yields diminishing returns.
The quality of sexual experiences also emerges as at least as important as frequency. Data from the Women’s Health Initiative found that sexual satisfaction is a meaningful predictor of cardiovascular health and overall wellbeing in women. Feeling genuinely desired, experiencing pleasure, and feeling emotionally connected during sex have positive health consequences.
If the individual’s benefits of regular sex are well-established, the picture for relationships is more nuanced beyond ‘more sex equals happier couple equals longer relationship’. The truth is somewhat more layered. When researchers explicitly ask couples how satisfied they are with their relationship, they often find no direct correlation with sexual frequency. But when they look at more seemingly disconnected “implicit attitudes” the picture shifts. Couples who have more sex show more positive automatic associations with their partner, even when they don’t consciously report greater satisfaction and these automatic attitudes predict relationship stability better than sexual satisfaction does.
A 4-year longitudinal study of American couples found that upticks in sexual satisfaction predicted positive changes in relationship satisfaction. However, happiness in the relationship for other life-event reasons did not spill over into sexual satisfaction.
Sex promotes pair-bonding through the hormonal mechanisms of oxytocin and vasopressin, deepening feelings of attachment and trust. Frequent, quality sex with a partner has been shown to buffer declines in relationship satisfaction, effectively artificially keeping the romance afloat, or to be kinder, providing a practical lifeline to give the connection the best chance before it fizzles. Physical nudity and sharing desires encourages vulnerability and self-disclosure in other areas, and reduces the likelihood of cheating.
A University of Guelph study compared people in non-monogamous relationships and found equivalent levels of relationship satisfaction compared to mono ones. A separate prospective study found that couples who opened their relationships experienced significant increases in sexual satisfaction, particularly when the motivation was to address sexual inadequacies, with no measurable negative impact on life satisfaction nor primary relationship quality. Research also found that within non-mono arrangements, people sexually fulfilled by their primary partner report greater satisfaction with FWBs relationships too, upending the assumption that desire and connection are finite resources to be competed for.
One study found that partners in non-mono couples reported sexual frequency, health, and happiness levels exceeding those of monogamous folks. The conventional wisdom that exclusive marriage is uniquely protective of health and happiness found no empirical support in that comparison.
The data can be skewed though when not saving for the subtle elements of conversational pre-encounter ground-setting, post-encounter disclosure, and honesty in confessing motivations. Partners who explicitly negotiate an agreement, then explain what happened with others and why report higher relationship satisfaction and stability.
Wanting to get laid more with your partner? If you’ve been listening then you’ll appreciate that having better sex begets more sex. That either means get good yourself, or connect with people who know how to make it good, or learn together through exploration. You might try reducing the friction of initiation. Switching to our sexual persona feels awkward, and exposed in more than one sense of the word. Smaller bids for intimacy are recommended. Low-stakes signals expecting reciprocation rather than grand overtures make lift-off easier and rejection gentler. It makes sense to vaguely schedule sex too and think deliberately about what it will trump in terms of other duties like laundry and lights off before 11PM. The Gottmans’ glorious relationship framework permits postponement but only once.
As for how your body count looks compared to your average fellow citizen, US and UK modal averages are 9 victims in a lifetime. It’s not clear where sex parties or group play evenings come into this questionnaire. At the high end we find Turkey, Australia, NZ, Iceland, Finland, and Norway at 12+. As for frequency, there doesn’t seem to be a good trend although Brazil places consistently at the top of studies as incomplete as they are, such as the 2017 Durex sponsored one. And as for Kinsey scale versus sex frequency, gay men have sex more regularly than other combos, and lesbians have the least, although they do play for longer per session.
