Are You Having Enough Sex?

If the last time you had a conversation on how much sex is normal, average or "healthy" was as confusing for you as it was my own, I have some positive news for you. We're not the only ones. A recent Psychology Today blog post by author and sex expert Robert Weiss put to bed the idea, once and for glorious all, that there is a "right" or "wrong" amount of sex for anyone. Weiss acknowledged what seems to be the incredible dearth of education on this particular topic, told everybody to calm down because the information they have been getting on the topic is likely inaccurate, and instead cited some studies on the matter.

The General Social Survey, one that's gone on since the 70s, claims that those who are married have sex 58 times a year.

Not sure about you all, but this number seems slightly low to me. I am also not what you would call "married." I'm more in the realm of "two bottles of cab a night seems acceptable, why not?" The problem with this statistic, Weiss says, is that there is no differentiation of age groups within this survey, meaning that even those who may be physically unable to have sex due to age constitute a percentage.

Couples in their twenties, according to this same survey, have sex 111 times a year and "the frequency of sex drops approximately 20 percent per decade as couples get older." One major problem that Weiss points out is that, when it comes to sexual surveys, people fudge it; for whatever reason, more willing to cite certain numbers they consider more favorable over those that are more accurate.

The main takeaway here is that there truly is no "normal" amount to have sex. You may bump it 20 times in a three-day period, but that doesn't mean you're a nympho, similarly to the fact that you may very well have a dry period wherein you don't have sex for a good month, but that doesn't necessarily equal sexual disfunction. A number of factors play into an increase or decrease in sexuality, including time of year, weather, stress, schedule and the straight-up nature of each relationship.

Just because Sarah from Bikram is having sex with her man 40 times a week doesn't mean you're a weirdo for sticking to just a few; people are different, and require different levels of sexual activity to be satisfied. So whether you consider yourself a hyper-sexual individual or if you're just a bit low-key, no worries. You're doing it right.

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