Women who have sex at least once a week are the ‘happiest’ in their relationship, according to a new study. Scientists found 85 per cent of women who had sex once a week described themselves as ‘sexually satisfied’, according to a study of nearly 500 heterosexual women.
In contrast, only 66 per cent of wives and girlfriends who had sex once a month reported the same level of relationship bliss. And the figure fell to 17 per cent among those women who had intercourse less than this.
Author of the new study Alexandra Janssen, a researcher at the University of Manchester, said the findings show the importance of regular intimate relations.
“While the study shows an association between frequency of sex and sexual relationship satisfaction, this is only a correlation.
“We don’t know whether women are happier because they are having more sex, if they are having more sex because they are happier, or if they are happier and having more sex because of other factors-perhaps they don’t have kids.
“Also, the fact that women who have less sex are also less satisfied in their relationship isn’t particularly surprising.”
Of the women surveyed, just over half described themselves as being ‘sexually satisfied. The data showed that satisfaction was also higher for women who reported more regular orgasms and rated sex as an important part of their life.
Janssen added: “What I found interesting in the study was that, while women who orgasmed more frequently were generally happier in their sex lives, women who orgasmed 100 per cent of the time weren’t the most satisfied.
“This contradicts the belief that women are most satisfied when they have an orgasm at every sexual encounter. It shows that women don’t have to orgasm every time they have sex to be satisfied in their relationship.
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“I hope that this takes the pressure off women who might struggle to achieve orgasm 100 per cent of the time.”
Janssen’s study also found that women who rated sex as ‘very important’ had happier love lives than those who did not.
Other findings from the study, published in the International Journal of Sexual Health, found that of the women surveyed those aged 18 to 24 were most likely to report being sexually satisfied.
In contrast, women over the age of 45 were the least likely to report being happy with their intimate relationship. The study was based on a survey of 483 women from New Zealand who had been in a committed relationship within the past year.
The authors noted their study did have some limitations. One was that being a survey, there was no way to verify if what the women reported was true.
Another was that the group of predominantly heterosexual women surveyed was not very diverse, which could limit the scope of findings to other groups.
Regular sex doesn’t just boost mood, multiple studies have concluded that it is great for our overall health, and can even potentially promote longer life.
