Could Too Much Sex Negatively Impact Your Marriage?

photo credit: karpov the wrecked train

If there is one topic that repeatedly gets the most buzz it’s sex. I’ve written on this topic several times thus far and I’ve always tried to approach the subject honestly.

One of the issues argued about in marriage may be the frequency of sex. The words too little or too much are often thrown around in this discussion. Regardless of which camp you find yourself, have you stopped to consider the impact the frequency of sex has upon your marriage?

Throughout the years there have been numerous research studies on the subject. Most notably beginning with Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues who surveyed over 11,000 men and women covering a wide variety of sexual issues, including how often they had sex. They discovered that young married couples tended to have sex approximately twice weekly.

Twenty years later Morton Hunt reported slightly higher frequencies of a little over 3 times per week on average. Several studies on sexual frequency in marriage have revealed that this number decreases as the marriage progresses.

Most recently a study in 2003 revealed that people engage in sex once per week. But in 2007, researchers from the University of Minnesota investigated the impact frequency of sex in marriage has on overall marital satisfaction.

They discovered that couples who had sex on average 4 times per year reported an overall higher level of marital satisfaction than did those couples in the average sexual frequency range. The reasons for this finding:

We think that couples who have sex less frequently than the norm have lessened the amount of time spent arguing over their sex life and more time accepting each other for who they are. Thus freeing their time to spend on other pursuits like careers, parenting, travel and the like.

So what’s your reaction to their findings?

For me, two things come up.

First, perhaps there’s merit to focusing less on your sex life and more on the other areas you seek to improve.

And second, realizing that today is April 1st, I hope you don’t buy any of the last half of this post as actual truth. There is no such 2007 study nor is the University of Minnesota associated with any study of this kind. April fools! Enjoy your day.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Corey is the editor of Simple Marriage as well as a licensed marriage & family therapist. While he has a Ph.D. in Family Therapy, he only occasionally likes to be called doctor. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe so you don't miss any future posts.

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