Your Friends Are Not Having More Sex Than You
No, Your Friends Are Not Having More Sex Than You
No matter what your friends disclose about their sex lives during bottomless brunch, it's likely they're stretching the truth — at least in terms of how often they're doing the deed. According to a US study published by personal-care brand Hims & Hers, 75 percent of Americans assume other people have sex once a week or more, when only 54 percent of Americans actually do.
The Hims & Hers data also show that 25 percent of Americans haven't had sex in the past month, but 95 percent of Americans assume other people have.
Given the facts, it's safe to say that when your friend flexes about her "wild" and "all-consuming" sex life with her partner, it's probably not happening as frequently as she says. But this isn't just the case for your friend; it applies to anyone who you're comparing your sex life to in general.
While there are studies out there that suggest the average adult has sex 54 times a year (or an average of about once a week), it really depends on your specific relationship with your partner. There's no "right" amount of times you should be having sex in order to have a healthy partnership.
Like most things in a relationship, what works for you and your partner(s) isn't going to work for other people. Especially when you consider how many factors play into how often you have sex (like how fatigued, stressed, or anxious you are and whether or not you or your partner are on any SSRIs or birth control that could affect libido). If you and your person have found a sex cadence that works for you, then it shouldn't matter how frequently other people are having sex.
Now, though it may seem like people in general are wanting to have more sex, Hims & Hers found that it's not really true. In reality, Americans are wanting to have different sex — in some cases, kinky sex. The survey showed that a mere 22 percent of Americans want to have more sex, but 72 percent "are interested in sex trends they haven't tried yet like voyeurism, polyamory, and digital sex work."
Perhaps if we all kept it 100 with our friends about our sex lives — and stopped comparing or flexing the truth — we'd realise that sex is not the end-all-be-all to a relationship. Yes, it may be more important in some relationships than it is for others, but I'm down to stop the one-upping. Instead, at brunch, we should be flexing our new jobs, salaries, and self-care methods and how bomb the blueberry pancakes are. Not how frequently (or not so frequently) we're having sex.
