TO QUOTE Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott, “Ain’t no shame, ladies do your thing.” Because having casual sex is good for your emotional health. That is, if you have liberal views about sex to begin with.
That seems like sort of a reverberating doi-ooh-oooii point– if doing it makes you happy, doing it will make you happy. (That’s what we call redunce-dancy.) But if Hobby Lobby has taught us one thing, there are still plenty of people who don’t prescribe to that way of living or have certain judgments about people (cc: all women) who engage in more libidinous pleasures.
But a recent study conducted at NYU and Cornell and published in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science, looked into why so many students continue to engage in casual sex despite the stigmas it carries. The results were clear.
According to the study, “For those who have liberal views on sex, casual encounters have a positive effect on psychological well-being.”
The study, which involved 371 undergrad students whose sociosexuality was moderated on a weekly basis across 12 consecutive weeks, over one semester, and over one academic year, surveyed the effect of casual sex on well-being. The students were tracked based on their sociosexual orientation (basically how they feel about casual sex) and the not-so- surprising outcome was the more relaxed the student felt about sex, the happier casual sex made them, and the higher their self-esteem was around the event. Call it a carnal education.
This isn’t the slightest bit surprising. Why else would a generation, for whom casual sex is a normative experience continue to engage in the behavior if it wasn’t pleasurable?
It’s refreshing however to see a study focus on potential positive outcomes of a healthy sex life as opposed to the negative. Other sexuality studies look at trends like the fact that depressed teenagers are more likely to engage in casual sex and that women are two times more likely to orgasm when they’re in a committed relationship. The research does suggest that being drunk might increase your odds of regretting a casual sexual encounter however…for another duh moment of research.
But as students head back to school this fall, it’s OK that not all of them will have only books on the brain. If it makes you happy, sex away! And be safe.
