Hello, readers! I have some unfortunate news: Sexcerpts will discontinue publishing as of today. I want to thank you for being loyal readers of the Sexcerpts blog, and I hope that you’ll continue to follow my relationships and sex coverage on SheKnows Love.

It’s been a pleasure writing for all of you for the past two and a half years. Please get in touch with me on Twitter (@jamiebeckman) or via e-mail (jamiebeckman (at) gmail (dot) com) if you’d like to say hi.

Stay safe and open-minded, and if you take away nothing else from this blog, please use condoms and teach your children about sex. I hope you’ve learned a few things and were entertained along the way.

Much love,

Jamie

Remember that old trope about women faking a headache as an excuse to get out of sex? Looks like the opposite holds true. A new study from the University of Munster in Germany found that sex might actually help migraine sufferers.

Researchers asked 1,000 people — 800 who suffered from migraines and 200 with cluster headaches (chronic sharp headaches that only affect one side of the head) — fill out a questionnaire about their sexual activity and its relationship to their pain. Turns out, 60 percent of respondents who had migraines reported relief when they had sex during their headaches (a third said sex made their pain worse), and one-third of cluster-headache sufferers said sex provided relief (half said the pain worsened).

So what gives? Researchers say sex releases endorphins, which are natural painkillers. And you don’t have to have a partner to give this fix a whirl — self-love works too. CBS News reports:

Other studies have shown that sex can alleviate migraines, but the studies were done on a smaller scale. [Study researcher Stefan] Evers suggested that masturbation or any sexual activity may be able to get rid of headaches in some people.

“Having an orgasm in any way shape or form will help (them),” he said.

It won’t work for everyone, of course, but we think a natural remedy as pleasurable as nookie is worth a shot.

[LiveScience via CBS News]

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Recently we’ve been hearing a lot about how people who are married are better off health-wise, whether that means better survival of a heart attack or better mental health. But a new study has found that those benefits don’t extend to everybody.

Here’s why, according to the research, published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior:

First, marriage provides less protection against mortality as health deteriorates, even though it does seem to benefit those who are in excellent health. Secondly, married people tend to overestimate how healthy they are, compared to others.

Ah, so the term “smug married” applies in this study! To come to these conclusions, researchers used data from about 789,000 people who participated in the National Health Interview Survey, conducted from 1986 to 2004. One reason why hitched people might overestimate their good health is because they have a spouse to help them cope, making their prognosis not seem quite so dire than if you were dealing with a health setback alone.

One takeaway from the study: Marriage can only do so much when it comes to your health.

“Marriage is helpful in persuading people to adopt a healthy lifestyle that can lead to a longer life,” said lead study author Hui Zheng. “But it is not as useful in helping people recover from a serious illness.”

Good to keep in mind…in sickness and in health.

[ASA]

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Muslims are more likely to wait to have sex until marriage than followers of any other religion, including those who practice Christianity and Judaism, found a new study published in Religion and Sexual Behaviors. The least likely to say they waited? Buddhists.

However, the number of people who are not waiting for marriage to have sex is still relatively high across the board — at least 60 percent for everyone, including those who have “no religion.” Check out the chart below, which illustrates the “probabilities of reporting premarital sex by religious affiliation for ever married females who live in a rural area.” It’s fascinating:

“Most major religions discourage sex outside of marriage, but some religions appear more effective than others at curtailing this behavior. Some cross-national studies have found that Muslims report more conservative attitudes about sex than do most other religious adherents,” the researchers reported.

And why are Buddhists comparatively so permissive? The study authors share this theory:

“The few studies that compare Buddhists to affiliates of other religions report inconsistent findings in their sex-related attitudes and behaviors. In contrast to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, which are monotheistic, Buddhism does not have similarly strict rules about specific behaviors, although observation of Buddhism’s four ethical precepts would preclude sex outside of marriage.”

Study authors Amy Adamczyk and Brittany Hayes, of City University of New York, used data from the 2012 Demographic and Health Survey for their findings. The authors conclude:

“[I]n contrast to other major world religions, Islam has the greatest influence on premarital and extramarital sex, and the percentage Muslim in a country shapes the likelihood of premarital sex. All major world religions discourage sex outside of marriage, but they are not all equally effective in shaping behavior.”

It’s important to note, though, that self-reported sexual behavior can be inaccurate, especially when there are extreme consequences for admitting to socially unacceptable behavior, as in the case of Muslim women reporting extramarital sex. Still, it’s extremely interesting to see who’s doing it before marriage (the vast majority of people) and who’s not — and that religion still plays a big part in what people do sexually.

[Boston Globe]

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Like booze? If your partner does too, you have a real shot (no pun intended) at staying together — provided you’re not drinking heavily, says a recent study.

The research, conducted by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, surveyed 20,000 married couples and found that the divorce rate was highest (26.8%) in couples in which the wife was a heavy drinker and the husband barely drank. The reverse, in which the man drank heavily, had a divorce rate of 13.1%. Talk about understanding wives!

Couples who both drank moderately, though, had a divorce rate of only 5.8%. Marriages in which both partners were heavy drinkers, however, didn’t enjoy the same benefit: They split at a rate of 17.2%.

So what gives? The Daily Mail reports:

Researcher Fartein Ask Torvik said there were several explanations for the disparity.

“One of them is that women in general seem to be more strongly affected by heavy drinking than men are. Thus, heavy-drinking women may be more impaired than heavy-drinking men,” he said.

Co-author Ellinor Major, added: “Heavy drinking among women is also less acceptable than among men in our society.”

The gender double standard is highly unfortunate, of course, but as big wine fans, we’re psyched about this research. Even more reason to clink glasses (but not too many glasses) with your partner tonight.

[YourTango]

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Aw, and we had such high hopes for this Hollywood couple! Funnyman Jason Segel and Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Williams are no longer dating, according to People. The pair had been together for about a year.

Why didn’t the relationship work out? That niggling but crucial little detail: distance.

“A source told People that the couple’s long-distance relationship – she lives in New York, he in Los Angeles – was to blame,” the mag reported.

We’re confident that Williams, who has been through her fair share of hardships in her lifetime, will recover splendidly. (Yahoo! recently reported that she looked O-M-gorgeous in a Jason Wu dress and asymmetrical blond bob this past week.)

We reported in June on Williams’s very decent relationship advice:

“You deserve more than just somebody who’s nice to you. I think that so often these days, niceness seems like it should be enough because it seems like such a rare quality but when you get inside of it, you think, ‘Hmmm… I can be pretty nice to myself.’

“What about these other things? Life is too short and too crappy to not try to get more of what you want.”

As for Jason: Call us!

[People]

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A  new book on hookup culture posits that women deal with societal pressure about sex and love by “splitting” different parts of their lives in order to match their ideas about how career, love, and sex intersect, reports Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon.

The book, Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom, by Leslie C. Bell, takes neither a pro- nor anti-hookup stance, Flory says. Instead, it reports on findings garnered from intense interviews with 20 college-educated twentysomething women of different racial backgrounds, both heterosexual and homosexual. First, Bell says, women today must contend with and make sense of a variety of mixed messages. Flory reports:

“Be assertive, but not aggressive. Be feminine, but not too passive. Be sexually adventurous, but don’t alienate men with your sexual prowess” — and so on. At the same time that they are encouraged to “live it up,” they “spend their twenties hearing gloomy forecasts about their chances of marriage if they don’t marry before thirty, and their chances of conceiving a baby if they don’t get pregnant before thirty-five.”

The concept of “splitting,” or attempting making sense of these complicated issues in a black-and-white way, goes something like this:

If a woman feels conflicted about her sexual desires, that typically manifests in a committed but perhaps sexually neutered relationship, [Bell] says: “They felt conflicted about having and expressing sexual desire and so gave it up.” If a woman feels more conflicted about her desire for a relationship, she’s likely to focus on no-strings sex over relationships: These twenty-somethings “feared losing their identities and independence through being in an intimate relationship,” writes Bell.

So what is a young heterosexual woman with myriad options to do? Bell suggests taking a cue from gay women and being more inclusive in their thought process about men:

What I hear my queer respondents saying is, their partners are human in a way that some of my straight female respondents did not express. One thing that I would just challenge straight women to do is to think of their male partners, or the men in their lives who may become partners, as more like them than different.

It’s refreshing to look at hookup culture without the bias of politics or religion or some other kind of hidden agenda and instead look at data from real women’s experiences. Also, mass media tends to pit women and men against each other (ahem, Kay Hymowitz), so it’s a relief to see all people treated as human beings in the context of the hookup debate for once.

Read Flory’s piece and her interview with Bell here.

[Salon]

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Rachelle Friedman Chapman‘s story is both a terrifying and inspiring one: At her bachelorette party in 2010, she was pushed into a swimming pool by her friend and wound up paralyzed from the chest down. She and her fiancé got married regardless a year later — and she recently participated in a Reddit Ask Me Anything Q&A to talk about her life…including how the pair has sex.

Here’s what she says about getting intimate with her husband, Chris:

Obviously our sex life is different. There were no “logistics” before and we could be way more spontaneous. Now we have sex of course but probably less because I might be in pain or something like that. Money is a factor because we were pretty even on that level before and now we rely on his teacher salary. So it does add stress but we work through it. I’d say we are more passionate and clingy with each other. I think we are just so happy because my injury could have been worse. We are lucky to have each other.

We love a good love story. Even sweeter: The pair is definitely planning to have kids, she says. Read more about Rachelle’s story on her website.

[The Daily Beast]

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If U.K. author Jessica Blair is your favorite romance novelist, surprise: She is actually a he — 89-year-old World War II veteran Bill Spence. Blair was a pseudonym given to him by his publishers.

Bill Spence has written 22 romance novels since his first was published, in 1993. (Along with multiple westerns and a war novel.) Spence said he was just happy someone wanted to publish his work, according to the Daily Mail.

‘When I am writing I have got to think in a female way and I have got to think about the period I am setting the book in.

‘I just love doing it. If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t do it!’

But this is the part that got us really verklempt:

‘My wife, Joan, who died sadly a few years ago thought it was amusing, but she has been a great support to me throughout my years of writing.

‘I suppose some men may suppose their masculinity had been questioned, but it has never bothered me.’

Forget Jessica Blair: Bill Spence is our new hero.

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On behalf of women everywhere, Billy Bob Thornton, we salute you: Angelina Jolie‘s former hubby told an enthusiastic TMZ photographer that he’s “never been shy” when it comes to having sex with a woman when she has her period.

Watch below for his answer:

We are unsure why this question even came up, but Billy was a good sport for answering it. We like any man who’s unafraid of the female body in all its glory, every time of the month.

More sex tips: 5 Paraben- and Glycerin-Free Lubricants

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