Itâs Tuesday morning, so you have some sex. Random Grindr guy; grinding jaw. He shuffles in; shuffles out.
(Afterwards, you find a quick minute to call your boyfriend and accuse him of cheating.)
Breakfast-time; waiter shoots a glance. âSexâŚ?â
Bathroom door locks. Trash cans topple. Wadded paper towels. Love? Bodies thrash in urinal puddles. You pull up your pants, say something clever: âBye, Felicia.â
How about we take this to the next level?
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(You fire off another few texts to your boyfriend, accuse him of being unfaithful. Again.)
Heading home. A shortcut through the park. You pass baseball practice. All-gay league. Dugoutâs damp. Spit-out tobacco everywhere. You get to know each member of the team. And each memberâs member.
Back at the apartment. Boyfriend comes home. You apologize. âIrrational fits of jealousy.â Amazing makeup sex. He cradles you: âYouâre my world.â
Related: Bears Have Lower Self-Esteem And Engage In Much Riskier Sex, Study Finds
Well. According to a 2015 study from Carnegie Mellon University, all this sexy love-making simply isnât enough to make you happy.
In fact, it might even make you unhappier.
As The Independent reports:
The experiment was straightforward: Measure how happy couples were with their current sex schedules. Then, split them into two groups and ask one group to have more sex (twice as much, to be exact) and ask the other group to change nothing about their sex lives. Finally, compare how happy they were afterward. (As part of the experiment, for example, couples having sex three times a week had sex six times a week; those having sex once a month had it twice a month.)
The experiment lasted 90 days, and the results genuinely surprised the scientists:
âContrary to what one would expect if the causal story running from sexual frequency to happiness were true,â the team wrote in their paper, âwe observed a weak negative impact of inducing people to have more sex on mood.â
In general, the researchers found that the couples who doubled the amount of sex didnât enjoy the sex as much and were less happy overall. Although the team can only speculate as to why this was, they did answer their question: More sex does not make us happier.
And since the study more-or-less âforcedâ the subjects to have more sex than theyâre accustomed to, it appears they developed âless motivation to have sex.â
Related: Study Finds People Who Like Grilled Cheese Sandwiches Have More Sex
The takeaway? According to George Leowenstein, a professor of economics and psychology, you should âconcentrate on quality and not quantity if you want to be happy.â
Of course, you could always concentrate on both.
What do you think? Are these findings at all useful? Or is this study stupid and covertly moralistic? Weigh in in the âCommentsâ section below.
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sanfranca1
In the opening supposition, he is having a lot of sex, but with multiple partners.
In the “experiment” the participants are having more sex, but with the same partner.
I think that makes a big difference; the first scenario is not directly equatable to the second.
That said, I do think that more sex doesn’t necessarily make you happier.
barkomatic
The study actually focused on increasing sex frequency among couples, but the article opened with a scenario in which a guy had sex with multiple different partners and seemed to imply they are essentially the same. I would argue that they aren’t the same.
onthemark
Way too many variables in this “study.”
bottom250
how it makes me happy
Paco
Well the Queerty scenario always left me feeling empty and never satisfied. What did it have to do with the study?
As far as the study is concerned, I think most couples settle into a routine with their sex, and with the busy schedules of today, being forced to increase the amount of sex can cause stress on the rest of the scheduling. Just my theory, anyway.
Or… Asking the couples to increase the number of times they have sex with each other, turns something that is spontaneous and dependent on mood, into something that has to be done to satisfy the demands of another, turning it into work.
Theonewhoismany
If only there were some variation in human behaviour. I mean surely by examining a few couples you can abstract that it must , ergo, be true of the rest of humanity. I am in my mid-thirties, and I married the man I was dating in my senior year of high school, one sex partner for 17 years. How much sex we have depends on how busy our lives are. It in no way impacts our level of happiness, it illustrates how hectic our careers are at times. The idea that a ‘study’ with a sample size this small, could come up with any type of definitive information about people is self-evidently absurd. What works for my marriage would probably not work for others. The variables of the human experience make this study an exercise of lighting the grant money that funded it on fire. I say that as an academic feeling constant pressure to produce meaningful, and contextual results.
Billy Budd
Different people have different sex drives and appetites. It is obvious that if you try to make this person have MORE sex than what he or she needs or wants, it won’t feel good. It is just a matter of following nature and instincts. In my case, I need more sex than my boyfriend. But we managed to fix this problem by having him help me out with oral sex when I need it and having me “service” him whenever HE wants.
MacAdvisor
I would certainly love to volunteer to have “All the Hanky Panky in the World” just to see if I wasn’t happier. I think I would be. I bet money I would be.
rmarin776
I think having more sex than you actually want isn’t going to make you any happier. But that’s different from having more sex because you’re not having as much sex as you’d like.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
It’s all about filling some massive hole! đ