We associate good relationships with sexuality, and it’s natural to assume that happy couples have sex more often than their miserable partners. But have you ever considered why sex is so beneficial to a relationship?
Before looking at the details of the study, let’s break down this sexual happiness equation: The researchers started with the well-established finding that when people have active and satisfying sex lives, they experience higher levels of happiness. As they point out, previous findings have shown that “people who have sex once a week have a larger difference in happiness than those who have sex less than once a month.” -Suitable for Years Someone earning $75,000 versus $25,000 a year.”
Is sex itself or sexual activity so beneficial to our well-being? You might argue that happier people are more likely to have sex more often because they have a good relationship and are happy with it. Well, good sex just follows good relationship dynamics. People who are more active overall may also be more likely to engage in intimate relationships, which in turn benefits their well-being. This cycle means that happy people become happier.
The authors argue that a key factor in a sexually happy relationship is positive emotions. However, as they point out, it is extremely difficult to test this possibility through typical questionnaire methods, which are susceptible to memory bias, or in the laboratory, which is artificial. Instead, their fourth and most revealing study used a daily diary method. The researchers provided participants with smartphones to record their responses, all collected over a two-week period, and participants regularly received signals from the phone to complete the assessment. The participants were 58 heterosexual couples with an average age of 25 who had been in a relationship for an average of four years.
A previous study in the series, which analysed daily diary reports from a larger and more diverse sample (working parents), showed that when people said they had had sex in the past 24 hours, they were more positive about positive Emotions are rated higher. The effect of sex on well-being is largely attributable to increased affection associated with previous sexual activity. For the smartphone-based study, which was only asked about sexual activity and affectionate moments, participants were only required to answer whether they had had sex since their last report, and whether they had had a “love and affectionate moment” with their partner.
Better sex skills for men.
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