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Sex, Love, and Intimacy: How Much is It
Worth?
Carlin and I just returned from a retreat in Hawaii
with 18 other couples led by Joyce and Barry
Vissell. We had known about the Vissell's work for
many years, but had never attended any of their
offerings. Prior to attending the gathering there
were two things that recommended them to us. First,
they have excellent people skills. Joyce is a nurse
and Barry is a psychiatrist whose main interest
since 1972 has been counseling, healing, and
teaching. They are the authors of five
deeply-moving books on relationship, family, and
healing.
The second thing that encouraged us to attend
was the success of their own marriage and the
emphasis they place on family and community life.
"We have not only been married since 1968 and have
three children," they tell us, "but we have made
these relationships a sacred priority. We feel our
work reflects our love of each other and
family."
They live with their three children, four golden
retrievers, five cats and one horse, at their home
and center on a hilltop near Santa Cruz,
California. Like all of us they have had their
struggles, but they have come through them with a
loving and intimate relationship that is intact and
growing ever deeper.
Carlin and I have been together for 25 years.
We've had our ups and downs and felt we were
entering a new phase of our relationship. We wanted
support and specific tools we could use to break
free of old, unhelpful, patterns and develop new
skills for loving and living. But the workshop was
expensive, both in time and money. We talked long
and hard about whether we could afford it. How does
one put a value on such things as a "relationship
workshop" or "couple's counseling" or
"psychotherapy"? More about that shortly.
We decided to go and sent in our money before we
could change our minds. We were not disappointed.
We spent a week with other couples learning to love
ourselves and each other. We realized that so much
of our time as a couple had been spent working out
our issues in isolation from other couples. Being
with Joyce and Barry and the other couples, along
with Charley Thweatt who provided wonderful,
heart-inspiring music, brought us to new depths of
caring and love.
For couples or individuals who would like to
learn about the Vissell's work you can visit their
website at www.sharedheart.org.
You can reach them directly at barryandjoyce@sharedheart.org
or phone 1-800-766-0629.
So, back to the question of money. How do we
decide how we spend it? Do we invest in the
stock-market, a retirement account, gold coins?
Should we send it to people who say they can
improve our relationships? With an investment like
the stockmarket we are putting in money and hoping
to get back more money in return. Its easy to
measure success. Do we get back more than we
invest?
But how to we measure the value of intangibles
like love, marriage, and sex? As a social scientist
I've often wondered whether we could do a study and
get some answers. Well the study has been done and
it's quite enlightening. Conducted by Andrew J.
Oswald of the University of Warwick in England and
David G. Blanchflower of Dartmouth College, their
research paper is titled Money, Sex, and Happiness:
An Empirical Study. Using data from surveys of
16,000 Americans, they were able to determine the
economic value of such things as marriage, divorce,
and sex.
Despite popular opinion, the study found that
having more money doesn't mean you get more sex. No
differences were found between income levels and
the frequency of sex. And the Sex in the City view
of life is not supported by the research. Married
people report 30% more between-the-sheets action
than single folks.
What's the economic value of more sex? According
to the study findings, they estimate increasing
intercourse from once a month to once a week is
equivalent to the amount of happiness generated by
getting an additional $50,000 in income for the
average American. Tell that to your partner when
they're too busy making money to make love.
All of a sudden the few thousand dollars we
spent on the couples retreat sounded like an
extremely wise investment. A number of the couples
were struggling to keep their marriages together.
Was it worth the cost of attending? Well, the study
showed that divorce translates to a happiness
depletion of $66,000 annually.
Many of the couples at the Vissell's retreat
were middle-age and older. Most of us weren't
having intercourse as often as we did when we were
younger. Were we left out of the economic bonus
pool? Not a bit. The biggest economic bonus of all
was for deepening our relationships. In fact, the
economists calculate that a lasting marriage
equates to happiness generated by getting an extra
$100,000 each year.
So next time you're thinking that you can't
afford to work on your relationship, remember the
numbers:
Divorce = -$66,000
More sex = +$50,000
Enduring marriage = +$100,000
Happy Valentine's.
©2010 Jed
Diamond
See Books,
Issues
+ Suicide
* * *
Wealth can't buy health, but health can buy
wealth. - Henry David Thoreau
Jed Diamond
is the internationally best-selling author of seven
books including Male
Menopause, now
translated into 17 foreign languages and his
latest book, The
Irritable Male Syndrome: Managing. The 4 Key Causes
of Depression and
Aggression. For over
38 years he has been a leader in the field of men's
health. He is a member of the International
Scientific Board of the World Congress on
Men’s Health and has been on the Board of
Advisors of the Men’s Health Network since its
founding in 1992. His work has been featured in
major newspapers throughout the United States
including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall
Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and USA
Today. He has been featured on more than 1,000
radio and T.V. programs including The View with
Barbara Walters, Good Morning America, Inside
Edition, CBS, NBC, and Fox News, To Tell the Truth,
Extra, Leeza, Geraldo, and Joan Rivers. He also did
a nationally televised special on Male Menopause
for PBS. He looks forward to your feedback.
E-Mail.
You can visit his website at www.menalive.com
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