“Neurotic” people apparently have trouble sustaining happy marriages. But scientists have found one thing that helps: lots of sex.
Sify.com explains, “Neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotion, and people who are high in it get upset and irritated easily, change their mood often, and worry frequently.” Pyschology Today adds that neurotic people are “more prone to depression, anxiety, self-consciousness and hypochondria, to name just a few behavioral tripwires. Neuroticism is no fun for anyone.” Especially not married people — Michelle Russell and James McNulty of the University of Tennessee write that, “High levels of neuroticism are more strongly associated with bad marital outcomes than any other personality factor.” However, their study has found a bright spot: neurotic people who have a lot of sex with their partners are just as happy with their relationships as calmer types.
This makes a certain amount of intuitive sense — sex can be calming, and it can be a way to smooth over relationship conflicts. If neurotic people have more of those conflicts, or are more bothered by them, maybe they’re able to achieve relief through frequent boning. Of course, it’s possible that being happier in your relationship causes more frequent sex, and not the other way around. One thing’s interesting about the study, though — among non-neurotic couples, frequency of sex wasn’t correlated with relationship satisfaction. So the take-home message is: don’t worry about how often you have sex. Unless you’re already worried about it — in which case, it’s time for some action.
Frequent Sex ‘Protects’ Neurotic People’s Marital Happiness [Sify]