I’m talking ’bout… sex.
Ever wondered how long your sessions of spirited rumpy pumpy last compared to how long other people are spending between the sheets? Well, the good people at Lovehoney may just have the answer for you.
In a survey of 4,400 of their customers, the online sex toy retailer, discovered that the average length of a sex session between opposite-sex couples was 19 minutes.
That’s including ten minutes of foreplay and nine minutes of solid… you know, action.
52% of those interviewed said that they were happy with this number of minutes but 19% of women and 23% of men said they wished their sex lasted longer.
This differs from a study by psychologist Dr Brendan Zietsch last year which followed 500 couples from around the world over a four-month period.
This study showed that love-making lasted between 33 seconds and a whopping 44 minutes, but the average duration was a very satisfying five minutes.
While we can’t say what is best for you, in an interview with NY Mag a while back, Nicole Prause, principal investigator at the Sexual Psychophysiology and Affective Neuroscience Lab at the University of California delved into the world of sex and advised people to listen to what their partner wants.
“There’s no such thing as someone who is ‘good at sex,” Prause told Science of Us. “It completely depends on your partner. For example, if you’re someone who loves to be pooped on, I’m never going to be a good partner for you. That’s just not in my repertoire.”
“If you like something they’re doing, say ‘I like that’. Use your words. If you can be more specific about what you like about it, do.
“If you really like being choked with a rope, that’s kind of dangerous. Maybe don’t start with that, but talk about it eventually. Start with something more common as a way of building trust.
“But the expertise isn’t embedded in the information,” she says. “It’s embedded in the individual.”
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