Frequent sex can save an unhappy marriage: Study

The highly neurotic, who tend to be moody, irritable and easily upset, have less happy partnerships and are more likely to divorce. But the study finds that making more love more often may solve their problems, reports the Daily Mail.

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Scientists followed 144 newlyweds over the first four years of marriage asking them how happy they were and how often they had sex.

On average, it was once a week during the first six months of marriage. By the fourth year, it had dropped to three times a month.

Marital satisfaction was not associated with the amount of sex - except among the highly neurotic.

The benefit of having it regularly wiped out their ‘happiness deficit' completely.

"Neuroticism is consistently associated with negative relationship outcomes," wrote James McNulty and Michelle Russell, from the University of Tennessee.

"The current four-year longitudinal study suggests one factor that may buffer neurotic individuals against their neuroticism - frequent sex.

"Results indicated that the frequency with which couples engaged in sexual intercourse with one another over each six-month interval moderated the implications of their neuroticism for their marital satisfaction," they wrote.

The findings appeared in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.