Seducing three blondes in a single week may earn you bragging rights but, going by the research, it may not make you any happier. It turns out, explains Marina Adshade at Big Think, that "people with more sexual partners are less happy than those who have just one." Also, those who cheat are less happy. That's counterintuitive, muses Ashade, if one's first instinct might be to assume that since "sex makes us happy" and "variety is the spice of life, having more sexual partners must make us happier."

Of course, says Adshade, the link between promiscuity and unhappiness is correlative, but not necessarily causal; there's no evidence that promiscuity makes people unhappy. It's possibly that the less happy are simply more promiscuous by nature. Here are some other tidbits Adshade uncovers in recent studies:

We know sex makes people happy and more sex makes people even happier. Men and women are made happy by sex. In fact, one study found that sex made women happier than any other activity. Younger people are happier in general, but not made any happier by having sex than older people are. More sex brings happiness into the lives of the highly educated compared to less educated people. Money may bring you happiness, but it won’t buy you more sex.  Being homosexual doesn’t make you any happier than anyone else, but it does mean having more partners.

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Heather Horn