Y’all are gonna have to weigh in on this article I read about sex and wages.
It all started last night, when I was online in the dining room. Hubby was doing the dishes in the kitchen. (And yes, he’s a rockstar dish-man, especially when I make his fave chicken and dumplings.)
So I yelled in there:
“Hey, Honey! Check this out. One of my Facebook pals sent me this article that says: People who have sex 4 or more times per week make more money.”
He walked all the way over to the doorway of the dining room, dishtowel in hand. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
“No! Geesh. You’ve got to hear this. This article is tripping me out.”
I read some of it out loud to him (my comments in pink):
“People need to love and be loved (sexually and non-sexually) by others. In the absence of these elements, many people become susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety, and depression that could affect their working life,” study author Nick Drydakis, an economics lecturer at Angila Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, said to CBSNews.com by email.
Well, yeah…Duh.
But wait, there’s more:
Drydakis took a closer look at data collected on 7,500 people aged 26 to 50 who lived in Greece.
[Hello? Greece! Who doesn't want to have sex in Greece? I've wanted to get it on there ever since I watched Summer Lovers in the 80s. Plus, the Greeks take 2-3 hour siestas every afternoon. Of course they're having tons of sex.
One last note: their economy was tanking when this study was done. It's possible their citizens had PLENTY of free time.]
Subjects who had sex four or more times a week made 5 percent more money in their employment wages than those who didn’t. Those who said they weren’t having sex at all made 3.2 percent less than their counterparts who were having sex.
[And how do we KNOW they were really having that much sex? Was this study following them around? They could have fudged the numbers, if you know what I mean.]
Drydakis said the more important thing to note is that those who had more sex were also more likely to be outgoing and had lower rates of diabetes, heart disease and arthritis.
“It seems that we have to consider jointly the relations between happiness, sexual activity, productivity and wages,” he said.
And my hat’s off to hubby because he immediately said: “But, is that increased salary a cause or an effect?”
(Thasss right. Look at my psych major hubby go with the statistical analysis.)
“If you make more money, you probably have at least two nannies taking care of your kids, which means you have more time for sex. The wealthy hire lots of stuff out to other people. And I’ll bet they take more vacations.”
I listened to him and said, “You know, you’re kind of depressing me with all this groovy stuff that the rich people have that all us ‘everyday’ people don’t.”
As he went back to the dishes, he called over his shoulder: “Maybe the only really wealthy people are porn stars.”
[The Hubs is awesome at the smarta$$ snark...I love it!]
So, excepting porn stars and prostitutes, do you think people who are having more sex are driven to excel in their careers? Or that people who excel in their careers (and earn more money) are able to have more sex? Do you have another theory entirely? Continue the discussion .
~ Jenny
About Jenny Hansen
By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 15 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.
When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at or at Writers In The Storm. Jenny also writes the Risky Baby Business posts at More Cowbell, a series that focuses on babies, new parents and high-risk pregnancy.
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