This is how much sex you need to be happy

How much sex is the right amount of sex? Are you getting it once a month? Every day? Twice a week?

There’s so much research into this question, you’d think sex was all anyone ever wanted to talk about.

But here’s an interesting thing. While in my 20-something single days my girlfriends and I had looong discussions over glasses of Pino about the state of our love lives — snogs enjoyed and conquests made (or not) — once were in relationships those discussions just …. stopped.

Revealing the details of your sex life – except perhaps oversharing with NCT friends in the aftermath of birth — becomes as taboo as divulging your salary. I’ve no idea how often my friends do it, and I’m certainly not telling.

Perhaps the sex life dissection ends because you grow up and realise some things are actually best discussed with your partner rather than your best friends. Perhaps it’s the fact that when you’re single and not getting much, hearing about the fun other people are having is depressing.

Perhaps it’s the fact that when you’re married and not getting much, hearing about the fun other people are having is truly depressing.

Still, I think it's a human impulse to want to know how you compare, so whenever there’s new research I find it impossible to resist reading.

Unfortunately that’s also why studies into the frequency of sex can be really unhelpful. We find ourselves making comparisons – for example, one estimate has the average couple shagging three times a week — and feeling dejected because we don’t measure up.

It turns sex, such a personal, multi-faceted activity, into nothing more than a numbers game. And doesn't take into account that our sex lives naturally ebb and flow depending on our individual libidos, relationship status, whether we’ve got kids or the state of our health.

The latest theory comes from academics at the University of Toronto, who investigated the love lives of 15,000 couples and concluded that our happiness levels plateau with sex once a week. Yes, you can do it more if you like, but it won’t make you any happier.

For once this is a story that makes me feel better. Not because I compare well, but because this is an attainable goal. Something I can actually see myself achieving.

I know this outlook risks reducing our sex life to nothing more than a chore to be ticked off on to-do lists of banal household tasks, down there with buying loo roll and topping up the windscreen wash. But given that my husband and I are classic 40-something parents — knackered from juggling jobs and running a home — and that our private time should be on an endangered species list, scheduling sex is vital or we’d simply never get round to it. Relying on spontaneity is just too risky.

So if sex once a week is all we have to juggle into the mix to make us happy then that's great.

I’m especially going to take heart from the Canadian researchers' conclusion that being intimate in other ways can be just as important to a relationship. All those hours we spend snuggled up in front of Netflix? I always knew they were a vital part of our marriage.