More sex please, but just don’t tell us to do it

As a recent study proves, turning anything fun into a chore can ruin it, so how can we enjoy things without the obligation trap?

A new study of the link between sex and happiness has been getting lots of media attention - presumably because it's about sex, and for the staff of traffic-hungry media organisations, the experience of receiving vast numbers of clicks on a story about sex is, ironically and poignantly, better than sex. The headline finding is that more sex doesn't automatically make you happier; in fact, contrary to the assumptions of most researchers, and for that matter most sex-havers, it makes many feel worse.

Here's how the experiment worked: half of the 128 couples involved were instructed to have twice as much sex as usual, then all participants filled out a survey, about their sex lives and happiness levels, every day for three months. Perhaps you can spot the problem here? (To be fair, the study's authors were well aware of it.) A better way of putting the results might be as follows: when four academics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh tell you to have more sex, and fill out a tedious form every day, it doesn't make you happier.