Topics: News, World News, Health, Sex and Relationships
A relationship expert has revealed what she believes is the right amount of sex couples should be having, and it might be a lot less than you think.
For most people, having a good and active sex life is an important pillar of having a long-lasting and fulfilling relationship.
With that said, it isn’t a one-size-fits-all and sex may be less or more important to certain couples. On top of this, the right amount of sex is likely whatever makes you and your partner both happy.
Dr Nicole McNichols, who is a professor of human sexuality at the University of Washington, has argued that there are still a good number of times a couple should be having sex on a weekly basis.
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She has previously noted that sexual satisfaction preceded relationship satisfaction in the majority of cases.
Speaking on the New York Times’ Modern Love podcast, she said: “If you look at couples over time who are asked to keep daily diaries of how satisfied they feel in their relationships and what their mental well-being is—including how happy and satisfied with life they feel overall, and how satisfying their sex life is— what you see is that when an uptick in sexual satisfaction occurs, the joy and satisfaction in the relationship follows.”
She clarified this point by saying that couples don’t need to be thinking that they need to be getting it on every minute of every day.
If you can manage that, kudos to you, but she explained that the sweet spot for how often a couple needs to get intimate is just once a week.
She explained: “When we look at the benefit of sex to relationship well-being, it doesn’t increase after about once a week.
“That's not an astronomical amount of time.”
The professor also noted that frequency isn’t the only thing that should be focused on, adding that introducing something new into sex lives once a month can be beneficial, according to research.
She continued: “It does not need to mean that you’re going to a sex shop and buying a bunch of leather and buying a nurse outfit.
“That’s fantastic if you want to try that. But it can be having sex in a different room, having sex while you’re on vacation, having sex at a different time of day than you normally do, having sex, that is, with all the lights on, having sex with the lights off.
“It really is about owning your own particular brand of what makes you come to a sexual situation feeling empowered to show up, assert your own needs, communicate, and have a mutually pleasurable experience.”
