The Key to a Happy Relationship? Have Sex Once a Week

Depending on who you tell, this news could come as serious relief or cause some major anxiety: Apparently, the happiest couples are having sex once a week.

Seriously: Despite long-held beliefs that the key to a truly successful relationship is swinging from the chandelier in positions that would confuse even the most highly skilled Twister player, a new study of more than 30,000 heterosexual married couples in the U.S. found that all partners need is a little romance one time each week.

But that doesn’t mean you have a free pass in your relationship to default to movie marathons if you’re not in the sack. Researchers found that intimacy is still of the utmost importance—but if you can maintain that intimacy through, say, cuddling, talking, or even sending steamy texts, more power to you.

“Although more frequent sex is associated with greater happiness, this link was no longer significant at a frequency of more than once a week,” lead researcher Amy Muise, a social psychologist and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto Mississauga, said in a statement.

The full findings were published in the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science.

So the next time your S.O. tries to pull the argument that more sex leads to a happier life, just whip out this study.