How often do you have sex? Once or twice a week? Every other month? Multiple times a day?

While the frequency may vary, there’s one thing the experts agree on: having sex more often can do wonders for how you feel about yourself and your relationships.

From building intimacy or boosting your mood to awakening you spiritually, there are plenty of reasons to make more time for the Big O. With this in mind, we’ve hit up four sexperts for their advice when it comes to realising the relationship between sex and happiness.

“Having more sex can increase self-esteem and improve overall mental health.”

Sex and relationships expert Melissa Stone believes having more sex can bring you closer in your relationship as well as improve your mood. She says:

“There are many benefits to having sex, both physical and emotional. Physically, it can help to reduce stress, improve sleep, and boost immunity. Emotionally, it can improve relationships and help to strengthen emotional connections between partners.

“Having sex more often can also help to increase self-esteem and improve overall mental health. Finally, it can be a great way to connect, explore, and express love with a partner, and can be a powerful tool for strengthening the bond between two people.

“Adding to this, sex can definitely make us happier, as it can help to reduce stress, increase self-esteem, and strengthen relationships. Studies have found that people who have more sex tend to report higher levels of happiness and satisfaction with their lives. However, it is important to note that sex alone is not enough to guarantee happiness, as there are many other factors that contribute to overall well-being.

“Having more sex can certainly improve a relationship. It can help to increase intimacy and connection between partners, which can in turn lead to greater satisfaction and happiness in the relationship. Additionally, it can help to reduce stress and improve communication, which are both important for a healthy relationship.

“Having a healthy sex life is very important for maintaining a strong and fulfilling relationship and building trust with each other. Being intimate with your partner builds stronger feelings, commitment and trust between you both, resulting in longer-lasting and happy relationships.

“It is also important to note that sex should be done with the consent of both people involved and in a mutually enjoyable way in order to ensure that it is beneficial to the relationship.”

“People should have the amount of sex that feels good for them.”

Conor Cregg, councillor and co-founder of Sex Club, believes having ‘connected sex’ can have a positive impact on the nervous system. He says:

“There is compelling evidence that good sex has a positive effect on our nervous systems. It can also be really fun and connecting but the key here is in the quality. Disconnected sex can have the opposite effect on our nervous system.

“At Sex Club we teach people how to bring awareness to what they want, what feels good in their body and how to ask for it from a partner and/or how to give it to yourself so that people can have more fun, feel more connected and get the benefits of this amazing thing we can do as a sexual being.

“I don’t know that I would prescribe for people to have more sex – I would suggest that people have the amount of sex that feels good for them. For some people that will mean more sex, for some people that will be the amount they are having right now. For some people, it will mean having less sex or being more selective about when they have sex.

“So often we have sex because of the pressure we feel, feeling that we should want to have sex. I would encourage people to check in with themselves and then be honest with themselves and with their partners about their actual levels of desire.”

“The focus should be on creating the right relationships for ourselves.”

Modern tantra expert and author Sofia Sundari believes clarity, both within one’s relationship and with oneself, is the key to happiness. She says:

“I see sex as a direct outcome of a healthy relationship. It does indeed have incredible benefits because it opens your heart and your body and it connects you to something way bigger than yourself.

“However, I feel the focus should be on creating the right relationships for ourselves first. On being honest with ourselves. It should be on bringing transparency in relationships. True love is what offers real benefits and sex is a direct outcome of that love.

“In terms of self-pleasure, I feel it’s more important to prioritise the relationship with ourselves and let it extend into self-pleasure practices. Not self-pleasure (as in watching pornography and bringing ourselves to peak orgasm) but self-pleasure as in really loving our whole body and opening into tangent experiences of truly honouring and loving the body and all its parts.”

“Orgasms can improve sleep quality and reduce anxiety.”

Georgina Vass, a qualified relationship and sex therapist, says physical touch is good for our overall health with the chemicals released during sex being important for mental wellbeing. She says:

“Sexual activity can be considered significant cardiovascular exercise and exercise has lots of health benefits. Orgasms can improve the quality of sleep, whether solo or partnered and longer sleep has been shown to increase female sexual desire more the following day. The oxytocin released during orgasm has also been shown to reduce anxiety. 

“Skin-to-skin contact also releases oxytocin which can occur through various forms of human affection like massage or cuddling or hugging. It can promote trust and empathy. 

“Sexual activity can lead to partial or complete relief of headaches in some migraine and cluster patients, and in older men and women, those who reported higher sexual frequency performed better on recall tasks than those with less sexual frequency suggesting that it could improve or maintain cognitive functioning.

“Humans need physical touch – it’s good for our health. Touch ‘deprivation’ is linked to anxiety and depression and other negative health effects. If you’re feeling disconnected and looking for more intimacy, it may be useful, to begin with other forms of touch like hand holding, cuddles, or back rubs.”

Remember: consent is always at the forefront of all sexual exploration.