Can “Too Much Sex” Ever Be Bad For You?

May 19, 2015

I know what you’re thinking – “too much” sex can’t be bad for you because it feels oh so good, and you can never have too much of a good thing. In fact, all of our research shows that sex is actually good for you, and it can save your relationship if you have enough.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped people researching the topic. We want to know as much about sex as possible, which is why almost every single week there is a new study into sex making the headlines. They will look at everything, from whether watching porn is healthy to which sex positions are the most risky and fun to try.

However, a recent study has suggested that having more sex could actually make you miserable. Yes, we were wondering how sex could possibly be bad for you too… so we decided to take an in-depth look.

bad sex

To be honest, when I first saw the conclusion that “too much sex” was bad for you, I just assumed that the people they interviewed clearly weren’t getting the right kind of sex. If sex is good, you will want it all the time, and the post-orgasm glow you get after sex makes you feel amazing.

If you are just having sex for the sake of it and not getting an orgasm, you are going to be miserable, especially if you continue to have sex lots without getting the orgasm you desperately need and deserve.

A lot of people out there can tell you how “bad sex” can affect your mood. I have had plenty of bad sex in my time, mainly as a result of a partner’s lack of interest in what I want during the act.

So when I first heard about this study, I just thought “clearly these people aren’t having the right kind of sex” or that they simply weren’t having orgasms. It seems that this may not be the case.

Tech Times

The report was released by the Tech Times, with the aim of challenging the assumption that having more sex will magically make you happy. The study looked at the sex lives of 128 couples and tried to see if there was a link between how often we have sex and how happy we are as a result of it.

The couples were split into two different groups and given instructions. The first group was told to reduce the number of times they got it on in a period of 12 weeks, while the second group were told to double their sexy romps in the bedroom. Can you imagine being told as part of a study that you need to have more sex? The men must have been jumping for joy!

In order to track their progress, they gave the couples questionnaires to complete in order to assess their moods over the three months, and see if there were any changes.

When it came to the end of the study that was published in the Journal of Economic Behaviour & Organization, the researchers found something quite surprising.

Is too much sex a thing?

The results from the questionnaires suggested that those who were asked to double their sexy antics in the bedroom were actually feeling a lot less happy as a result of it. So, more sex actually does make you more upset, right?

Well, that might not necessarily be true. For a start, this was a very small scale study, looking at only 128 couples. These couples might not be representative of you and your circumstances, so we can’t automatically assume it is all correct without a larger scale study.

The researchers themselves also pointed out a vital flaw in their method, suggesting that the change in mood might not indicate a decrease in the “desire for it” or in the enjoyment, but might actually be because they were being told to do it, instead of getting it on when they wanted to.

“Perhaps couples change the story they told themselves about why they were having sex, from an activity voluntarily engaged in to one that was part of a research study.,” says George Lowenstein, a study investigator.

Further testing needed

It seems that, in order to see if more sex makes you unhappy, they would need to conduct more tests. Lowenstein suggested that there might be alternative way of seeing if sex can be bad for you.

“If we ran the study again, and could afford to do it, we would try to encourage subjects into initiating more sex in ways that put them in a sexy frame of mind, perhaps with baby-sitting, hotel rooms or Egyptian sheets, rather than directing them to do so.”

Both Lowenstein and Tamar Krishnamurti, the study’s co-author, believe that increasing the amount of sex you have in the right way or focusing on the quality of the sex you are having could go a long way to making you happier.

“Instead of focusing on increasing sexual frequency to the levels they experienced at the beginning of a relationship, couples may want to work on creating an environment that sparks their desire and makes the sex that they do have even more fun,” said Krishnamurti.

Sex studies

So, this study hasn’t really told us that much about sex. Really, all it has shown us is that being ordered to have more sex can take the fun out of it, and that doesn’t really answer the question of whether too much sex can ever be bad for you.

If you were asked to be a part of a study like this, would you? What do you think the best method is of finding out if sex is good for you, or if there is such a thing as “too much”?

Honestly, I think we need to stop worrying about whether we are having the “right amount” of sex. There is no “right amount” or “normal” when it comes to sex. It varies from person to person, and as long as you are having consensual sex and enjoying it, is there really a problem?

Let us know what you think about this study by leaving a comment in the box below. Do you think you can have “too much sex”, or is sex so good that you could have it all day every day if you could?

Lara Mills
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