New Delhi, Aug. 1 -- young adults who describe themselves as deeply in love report having sex an average of 3.5 times per week. Not twice. Not five times. Three and a half.

The study, published in Current Sexual Health Reports, was led by researcher Adam Bode, who analyzed data from the Romantic Love Survey 2022, the largest publicly available dataset of people experiencing romantic love. More than 1,500 young adults from 33 countries participated, reporting on the depth of their feelings and the frequency of their physical intimacy. The 3.5 times per week figure that emerged sat well above the once-per-week average associated with married couples in the general population, and that gap tells a quiet, complicated story about what the ear...