Does more love making make you happier?

Happiness may be linked to how often you get it on—but only up to a point.

published 12/09/2015

Does more s3x make couples happier? Or do happier couples have more s3x? It’s a classic chicken and egg debate—and one that’s hard to study scientifically. But a group of researchers in Ontario fearlessly waded into heaps of data to consider this question. They looked over survey responses from 25,000 people in the General Social Survey and 2,400 couples in the National Survey of Families and Households to learn how often people had s3x, how satisfied they were with their relationships, and how happy they were overall.

How often you have s3x matters, up to a point

In both studies, people in relationships who had s3x less than once a week reported lower average happiness. It wasn’t a big difference (about a 10% change in the average level of happiness), but it was more than you’d expect to see by chance.

Here’s the kicker: people who had s3x more than once a week weren’t any happier than people having a weekly romp. So maybe s3x is like money…having too little may make you unhappy, but having lots doesn’t make you any happier.

But s3x isn’t the most important key to happiness

This study found that weekly s3x wasn’t the most important factor for happiness. Relationship satisfaction had a much bigger effect on couples’ happiness than frequency of s3x did. So if you’re in a relationship and on a happiness-boosting lead to better s3x, too.