Sex And The Pursuit Of Happiness: How Comparing Our Sex Lives Brings Us Down

The obtainment of sexual nirvana has become something of an obsession in today's media. The effect, according to a new study, may actually be counter-productive as people with otherwise healthy and sustaining sex lives feel they are "behind" societal norms when it comes to frequency.

"There's an overall increase in sense of well-being that comes with engaging in sex more frequently, but there's also this relative aspect to it," said the study's lead author Tim Wadsworth, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. "Having more sex makes us happy, but thinking that we are having more sex than other people makes us even happier."

The result, he says, is something of a "keeping up with the Joneses" effect.

And while income and style of living is as visible as one's neighbors rolling into the driveway with a new Mercedes, sexual expectations, Wadsworth argues, are set via magazines, television and "discussions within peer groups and friendship networks."

In all, Wadsworth examined surveys completed by more than 15,000 people between 1993 and 2006.

After controlling for factors such as income, education, marital status, health, age and race, Wadsworth measured a 33 percent increase of self-reported happiness in individuals who had sex two to three times a month compared to those who reported having no sex in the previous 12 months.

Similarly, those who had sex weekly showed a 44 percent increase in happiness in comparison to the same group - those who didn't engage in sex throughout the previous year, which then rose to 55 percent among individuals engaging in sex two to three times a week.

Wadsworth then watched as these numbers fell by as much as 14 percent in some cases when people believed their peers were engaging in sex more frequently than themselves.

Such social comparisons, Wadsworth believes, are used more frequently by people to feel less adequate, rather than the reverse.

"We're usually not looking down and therefore thinking of ourselves as better off, but we're usually looking up and therefore feeling insufficient and inadequate," he said. "As such, we can only be wealthy if others are poor, or sexually active if others are inactive."