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The benefits of relationships and canoodling abound. Yet contrary to what some men may claim in locker rooms, dorm rooms, and after one too many rounds during happy hour, more sexual partners does not equal more happiness.
Scientists examined data from 16,000 Americans and found that:
The happiness‐maximizing number of sexual partners in the previous year is calculated to be 1.
That’s right, according to research, one sexual partner over 365 days is the ideal number. It’s better than two or two hundred.
These findings run contrary to the Coolidge Effect, an anecdotal story about President and Mrs. Coolidge visiting a poultry farm in the 1920s:
The President and Mrs. Coolidge were being shown separately around an experimental government farm. When Mrs. Coolidge came to the chicken yard she noticed that a rooster was mating very frequently. She asked the attendant how often that happened and was told, “Dozens of times each day.” Mrs. Coolidge said, “Tell that to the President when he comes by.” Upon being told, President asked, “Same hen every time?” The reply was, “Oh, no, Mr. President, a different hen every time.” President: “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.”
The tendency of males of most mammalian species to seek variety in sexual partners and exhibit greater sexual desire for new partners, even after ‘exhausting’ themselves with previous partners became known as The Coolidge Effect. Study after study shows that rats and hamsters most definitely exhibit the Coolidge Effect.
So what about humans? While we may be biologically wired to follow the Coolidge Effect to guard against putting all our eggs in one basket, the study clearly shows one sexual partner a year optimizes happiness. Evolution may want us to procreate but there is more to living a meaningful life than reproduction. As Arthur Brooks writes in an article entitled, Love People, Not Pleasure for the New York Times:
…that is Mother Nature’s cruel hoax. She doesn’t really care either way whether you are unhappy — she just wants you to want to pass on your genetic material. If you conflate intergenerational survival with well-being, that’s your problem, not nature’s. And matters are hardly helped by nature’s useful idiots in society, who propagate a popular piece of life-ruining advice: “If it feels good, do it.” Unless you share the same existential goals as protozoa, this is often flat-out wrong.
Bottom line: Unless you are a protozoa, cherish the ones you love and cultivate love and kindness.
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