--- title: For a Happier Life, Have Sex Once a Week description: A new study says couples who have sex once a week are happiest. canonical: https://time.com/4116508/for-a-happier-life-have-sex-once-a-week/ author: Belinda Luscombe article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-11-18T13:01:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:45:12.134Z og:title: For a Happier Life, Have Sex Once a Week og:description: Any more than that doesn't make most people any happier, a new study shows og:url: https://time.com/4116508/for-a-happier-life-have-sex-once-a-week/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt400a008897c6b74c/698871930b72e3efa46e6dec/bedroom.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5153 og:image:height: 2899 og:image:alt: 565881151 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: For a Happier Life, Have Sex Once a Week twitter:description: Any more than that doesn't make most people any happier, a new study shows twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt400a008897c6b74c/698871930b72e3efa46e6dec/bedroom.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # For a Happier Life, Have Sex Once a Week > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture recommendation newsletter, edited by culture editor Eliza Berman. Twice a week it surfaces the books, shows, films and ideas TIME's editors think are worth your attention, and explains why. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Does TIME have a culture newsletter? Yes. Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: A 100-Year-Old Sex Therapist on Having Good Sex, Then and Now [Watch (HLS stream): A 100-Year-Old Sex Therapist on Having Good Sex, Then and Now](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uJFYIrvP.m3u8) (3:13)  _Published 2014-08-20. A practicing sex therapist in New York City, Dr. Shirley Zussman has witnessed everything from the legalization of the contraceptive birth control pill to the AIDs epidemic in the 1980s to the rise of internet porn in the new millenium._  by [Belinda Luscombe](https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/)  ## Belinda Luscombe Editor at Large Nov 18, 2015 1:01 PM UTC  Feet of Caucasian couple laying on bed Feet of Caucasian couple laying on bed Dave and Les Jacob—Getty Images/Blend Images  by [Belinda Luscombe](https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/)  ## Belinda Luscombe Editor at Large Nov 18, 2015 1:01 PM UTC In news that could flood marital bedrooms around the globe with waves of either relief or anxiety, researchers have found that sex once a week is the optimum amount for maximizing happiness. Couples having sex more than once a week do not report being any happier, according to a new study published in _Social Psychological and Personality Science,_ but couples having it less than once a week report being less happy. The study was based on an analysis of the results of surveys of more than 30,000 Americans collected over 40 years in three different projects. It’s the first study that finds that copulation could be one of those activities that offers diminishing returns. Before looking up from this and glaring at your spouse, however, be aware that this research and most experts stress that sex is not a one-size-fits-all arrangement—one person’s feast is another’s starvation diet. Moreover, any study of happiness must perforce be about correlation and not causation. It’s possible that people in happy relationships have sex once a week, rather than vice versa. Or that people are happy having sex once a week because they think that’s what everybody else is having. (For single people, in case you were wondering, there seems to be no consistent association between sexual frequency and happiness.) The results of the new study are somewhat surprising, as previous investigations into the science of sex had suggested that as far as nooky went, more was always better. “Most people strive to be happier and sex is one aspect of life that is thought to be associated with greater happiness,” says Amy Muise, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study. She also notes that the media, from movies to music to news reports, has generally echoed the abundance theory. But, taking a cue partly from the work of Nobel Prize winning economists Daniel Kahnemann and Angus Deaton, who found that after $75,000 more wealth was not associated with greater happiness, she hypothesized that the same might be true for sex. And according to her results, it is. “We found that sexual frequency was associated with greater well-being up to about once a week for the average person,” says Muise. “Having sex more frequently than once a week was not associated with greater well-being.” The good news for players is that more sex wasn’t associated with lower well-being either, but having sex less than once a week was definitely associated with a drop-off in contentment. In fact, the study found that the difference in life satisfaction between couples who had sex less than once a month and those who had it once a week was bigger than the difference between couples who were quite poor, making between $15,000 to $25,000 annually, and those who were much wealthier, making between $50,000 and $75,000. However, despite the apparent happiness gains that more sex can bring, the sluggish sales of Addyi—the so-called women’s Viagra—have also suggested that high frequency rolls in the hay are not top of everybody’s must do list. “Desire is too abstract to measure,” Thea Cacchioni, a sociologist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, recently told Bloomberg News. “It’s a really recent idea that we should have a high sex desire all the time,” she continued. “We now feel a lot of pressure if we don’t meet the kind of hypersexuality we see in the media.” Muise says she is still exploring why one appears to be the magic number. “Once a week tends to be the average frequency among established couples so it’s possible that this is the average because more frequent sex is not associated with greater well-being,” she says. “It’s also possible that people feel happy when they think they are at or above the average frequency.” But there’s not a lot of evidence that suggests people are aware how often others are having sex. “Once a week may also be the frequency that people feel is enough to maintain their intimate connection,” she adds. John Updike wrote that sex is like money; only too much is enough. Muise’s research seems to suggest that maybe sex is indeed like money, just in the opposite direction: only too little is bad. ## Transcript Sexual pleasure is only one part of what men and women want from each other. They want intimacy, they want closeness, they want understanding, they want comfort, they want fun, and they want somebody who really cares about them beyond going to bed with them, and I think people are always seeking that. In every generation. [ MUSIC ] My name is Shirley Zussman. I just reached a hundred years of age, and I am a practicing sex therapist. I was invited with my husband to a lecture in New Jersey, in 1966. Masters and Johnson were the speakers. No body knew about them. Human sexual response had just been published, what I saw was a couple who will say that people had problems in an area in their lives that was very important and they were recognizing that it was all not just. Glamorous and wonderful to be sexual. One had to almost had to learn how to be a good partner and to endure the pleasure not only for yourself but for each other. And I thought we can do that. Why can't we do that? And we applied for training with Masters and Johnson at that time. The patients that came to us were people who read the paper. The only way they do anything about the work that was being done there. And the problems they came with, was somewhat different than the problems they come with today. Mostly, women came because would put out orgasmic, they didn't know how to achieve an orgasm, but they wanted one. It was so over that ,. Goal they had for themselves and how do I get there. That was one Masters and Johnson's contribution that there was a relatively simple way to start learning about your body. In other words, get, get to know your, who you are sexually and physically and that was. And encouragement for masturbation for learning what makes you feel good. I see a big change in the we view casual sex. In the 60's I think it was not just casual it was frantic. I'm shocked at the lack of connection with people; because of iPhones, even I love my iPhone. There is so much less actual physical connection, there's less touching, there's less talking, there's less holding, there's less looking, [ INAUDIBLE ]. People get pleasure from looking at each other. But the most common problem, I would say, in the sex therapy that I live in, is a lack of desire. You have to look at your priorities. You have to decide what is important to make you feel good about yourself and your life. And to help make your partner feel good and to establish something that is gratifying that really fills a need that we all have to be close to somebody. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4116508/for-a-happier-life-have-sex-once-a-week/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4116508/for-a-happier-life-have-sex-once-a-week/"},"headline":"For a Happier Life, Have Sex Once a Week","datePublished":"2015-11-18T13:01:13.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:45:12.134Z","description":"Any more than that won't make any difference, say researchers","url":"https://time.com/4116508/for-a-happier-life-have-sex-once-a-week/","keywords":["Living","Marriage","Sex","Family","relationships","Happiness","health"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt400a008897c6b74c/698871930b72e3efa46e6dec/bedroom.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Belinda Luscombe","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt400a008897c6b74c/698871930b72e3efa46e6dec/bedroom.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"565881151","caption":"white bedroom","creditText":"Dave and Les Jacob—Getty Images/Blend Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4116508/for-a-happier-life-have-sex-once-a-week/","name":"For a Happier Life, Have Sex Once a Week"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"A 100-Year-Old Sex Therapist on Having Good Sex, Then and Now","description":"A practicing sex therapist in New York City, Dr. Shirley Zussman has witnessed everything from the legalization of the contraceptive birth control pill to the AIDs epidemic in the 1980s to the rise of internet porn in the new millenium.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/uJFYIrvP/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-08-20T13:40:15.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uJFYIrvP.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4116508/for-a-happier-life-have-sex-once-a-week/","duration":"PT3M13S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4116508/for-a-happier-life-have-sex-once-a-week/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```