In a world obsessed with success and comparison, it can be easy to feel like you’re the only one not living an exciting, sexual life.
The reality is that our perceptions of sexual frequency are grossly distorted and hopelessly inaccurate: most of us believe that everyone else is having way more sex than we are. And that makes us miserable.
Time for a reality check.
How often we have sex depends on so many factors that it’s almost impossible to predict what another person will do.
Forget drunken bragging and sexy Instagram posts, these are the things that really reveal what goes on in other people’s bedrooms.
Reading – and then relaxing!
Tracey Cox says our perceptions of sexual frequencies are wildly distorted and hopelessly inaccurate (stock image)
How old are you
The younger you are, the more sex you have. The older you are, the less sex you have.
This will come as no surprise to anyone: as we age, our energy levels decline, as do the hormone levels that fuel our sex drives.
What may surprise you is how quickly our peak frequency decreases – and this starts from a very young age.
Men and women in their mid-20s to mid-30s have sex an average of eight to nine times a month. After two years, this drops to six times a month. People under 25 have sex about 11 times a month, but even they have sex less often the longer they’ve been with their partner.
Which brings me to the second most important factor that affects frequency…
How long have you been together?
One study (the Archive of Sexual Behaviour) estimates that couples have sex 146 times a year in their first year together, dropping to 86 times in the second year.
Yes, it falls so fast.
Why does desire wane the longer we’re together? Because desire loves new things—and a new body to have sex with is the best of all! We also want what we can’t have: 24/7 sex can dampen the liveliest libido.
Then there is the overfamiliarity that produces the “sibling effect.” The closer you get to your partner, the less you want him or her. Sociability and connection foster love, not desire. The drop in frequency over time is even more dramatic if you are a woman.
The decrease in frequency over time is even more dramatic if you are a woman.
British expert Tracey Cox (pictured) revealed that the statistic that ‘most people have sex 2.5 times a week’ was never correct
What gender are you?
The longer a relationship lasts, the less a woman wants sex.
A German study found that 60 percent of women want sex regularly at the beginning of a relationship, but that this percentage drops to less than 50 percent in the following four years and to around 20 percent after 20 years.
Four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex. Men’s libidos generally remained stable throughout the relationship.
Why do women stop having sex sooner than men?
Boredom plays a big role.
American sex therapist Ian Kerner surveyed 341 respondents in steady relationships: women were twice as likely to report feeling bored in the first year and the first three years of a relationship as men.
Women are also more influenced by another important factor that determines how often a couple “does it.”
How good the sex is when you have it
The better the sex you have, the more often you’ll do it.
The rule of “quality trumps quantity” runs like a thread through all the reputable research and studies: couples who report higher levels of sexual satisfaction have sex more often. About twice as often as couples who do not score high on satisfaction.
No one has great sex all the time. It’s normal for five to 15 percent of sexual experiences to be mediocre or unsatisfying. (If you’re not “failing,” you’re not trying new things.) But if you’re doing more than that, you could be in trouble.
What your natural sexual desire is
How often we desire sex is partly predetermined: there is a genetic element. The messages you receive about sex during childhood also influence your desire as an adult, as do traumatic experiences.
If you both have a strong sex drive, you will be the couple having the most sex. Although everyone’s libido gets a boost at first, this usually becomes apparent quickly.
How often you have sex in the first year of being together determines how often you will have sex afterward. Research shows that it sets a pattern: if you have sex more than average, it continues even after two years when there is a point of decline.
It is also true that the person with the lowest sex drive determines how much sex the couple has. It is rarely, if ever, a matter of how much the person with the highest sex drive wants to do it.
Visit traceycox.com for Tracey’s blog, books, podcast and product range.