Sexual history correlates with marital happiness

What’s the ideal number of lifetime sexual partners? Conventional wisdom tells young adults that sexual experience is necessary for a happy marriage. But the data tells a different story. It turns out that those who have fewer sexual partners prior to marriage tend to have happier marriages. Married men and women report the highest levels of marital satisfaction when they’ve only had one sexual partner in their lifetime: their spouse. As the number of partners increases, the odds of being “very happy” in marriage, on average, decreases. And as research from the Wheatley Institute shows, this holds true whether previous partners were from casual hookups or serious relationships. Other research suggests that divorce risk rises with the number of premarital sexual partners. When it comes to marital happiness, one partner is the ideal number.

by Grant Bailey