Play nice. Or naughty!

Are you getting laid enough? If you are in a relationship -- the straight-sexual kind, or the legally gay kind, or the "it's complicated winky winky but still counts somehow" kind (whatever, Facebook) -- you might not be getting your sexparts sexily sexified, with sex, nearly enough. And your very happiness is at stake! Science says so:

[F]or established couples, having sex once a week hits the sweet spot for happiness and well-being, a study finds. This is either great news or tragic, depending on how you're feeling about your sex life. [...]

Researchers looked at data on 25,510 Americans, ages 18 to 89, about two-thirds of whom were either married or in a romantic relationship. For the people married or in relationships, more sex definitely correlated with more happiness.

Gettin' happy endings on the regular makes you happier. This seems so NO DUH, we are amaze-sauced anyone thought this needed to be scientifically proven. But ... are there buts? That's your own personal choice, no judgment. (Get it? BUTTSEX.) For serious, though, yes, here is a but:

But when the researchers crunched the numbers to find out if there's an upper limit to improving well-being through sex, they found that the happiness maxed out at sex about once a week.

So, according to science, you and yours need to get it on and make "O" faces at each other once a week, but then you can say, "Aw honey, not now, I have a headache and we are already as happy as can be, SCIENTIFICALLY SPEAKING." And then, if you want to be a real non-sexual dick about it, you can be all, "Also, honey, don't forget what we heard on NPR, while we were heading to the farmer's market last weekend with our tote bags":

"This showed a linear association between sex and happiness up to a frequency of once a week, but at higher frequencies there is no longer an association," Amy Muise, a social psychologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga who led the research, said in an email. "Therefore it is not necessary, on average, for couples to aim to engage in sex as frequently as possible."

Of course, if you invoke NPR to avoid doing sex with your Established Other, you might not reach your weekly happiness quota because you are sleeping on the couch. And the study doesn't cover whether sexing yourself counts, but we are guessing nope. (Although we and our sex toys are very happy together in our long-term committed relationship, FYI and TMI.)

Here is another but:

[B]ut the data come from U.S. surveys done in 1996 and 1998, years the researchers picked because those sets of data had information on both marital status and relationship status. Surely things have changed on the relationship front since the Clinton administration?

Things have changed since the Clinton administration, ever since we all learned what a b-job is (thanks, Mr. President). And all the gaysexuals are out of all the closets with their legal "established relationships." And also, everyone does it in the butt now, according to even more science. And also too, all of U.S. America, especially in the down-there region, has toyed with getting its freak on, thanks to that hurts-so-bad-and-not-in-the-good-way franchise, Fifty Shades Of Eyerolling Because That Is Not The Proper Way To Do BDSM, Duh. Or so we've heard.

Also, since the Supreme Court killed traditional established relationships, and everyone is bipansexually fluid now, who even knows how to account for who should be boffing whom and how often and what it all means? The Kinsey institute, named for Dr. Kinsey, inventor of S-E-X, has all these tables and numbers (it's like science, but with math) for how often people claim to be doing it. Are they happy? Who can say? Are any of us happy? Oh crap, existential crisis issues, and we were just trying to make some LOL Wonkette dick jokes.

In conclusion, sex can make you happy, so if you like having sex, and you like being happy, you should have have as much sex as you want, with whomever you want, however you want, so long as it is consensual, and if you don't know what that means, then no, you should not be having sex with anyone but your own dirty sock, got it?

Finally, please don't fuck animals, that is gross and wrong and even illegal in some states.

The. Happy. End.

[NPR]