How much sex is everyone REALLY having?

Well, after surveying 7,700 people (!!!), we have some answers for you!

Drumroll please…

Everyone is having…

All kinds of different amounts of sex! 

Here’s the breakdown:

There’s a nearly dead even split between:

• 2-3 times a month
• Once a week
• 2-3 times a week

These three categories account for nearly 3/4 of responses!

Do kids kill your sex life?

We also analyzed the data to look at how having kids impacts sexual frequency. 

We know having kids can pose a lot of challenges to intimacy, so we thought we’d see a big difference between parents (who made up about 75% of respondents) versus child-free couples (about 25%). 

But shockingly, we found very few differences!

Couples without kids are slightly more likely to be having sex 2+ times per week, but the difference was surprisingly small.

Parents, you can still keep the spark alive even with kids!

Does age matter?

Surprisingly, age doesn’t seem to have a huge impact on sexual frequency either. 

Regardless of age, most couples are still in the three most common categories: 2-3 a month, once a week and 2-3 times a week.

However, we did find that those 50+ are most likely to be having sex the most out of any of the age groups. 9% have sex 4+ times a week!

Quality versus quantity

We asked people to rank their satisfaction with the quality of the sex they have on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being not at all satisfied, and 5 being very satisfied.

We were surprised to find that 4 is the most common response (38% of people)! It was followed by 3, at 29% of respondents

Some other interesting findings:

• Only 14% of couples reported being dissatified (1 or 2) with the quality of sex they are having.
• Couples with kids were no more or less satisfied with the quality of sex versus couples without kids.
• Age didn’t appear to play a factor in satisfaction either!

There does appear to be a correlation between sex frequency and reported quality. Couples who report being dissatisfied with the quality of their sex tend to be having sex less frequently, whereas couples who are more satisfied, are more likely to be having sex more frequently. 

But of course, we don’t know the causality. Do couples who have great sex naturally want it more? Or does having more sex lead to more enjoyment? 

We’re making a YouTube video about these results so we can go into even more detail. Keep an eye out for that video on Thursday!

Whenever I talk about sexual frequency, I always want to be clear that there really and truly is no “magic number” when it comes to sex. 

I’ve worked with couples who have sex multiple times a day and were miserable and unsatisfied, and I’ve worked with couples who have sex a few times a year and feel happy and connected. 

I know that sex can feel overwhelming sometimes, and it can be tempting to focus on something that seems straightforward, like numbers. So many people want to have that magic number to assure them that their sex life is healthy and acceptable.