The Average Time Sex Lasts (How Long Do You Last?)

In middle school and high school the young folks sit around the locker room (or wherever it is your group of friends hung out and socialized) and talk about how long they lasted during sex with their girlfriends or pick on their friend who’s ex-girlfriend leaked the info regarding him only lasting a few minutes.  This type of talk is common place among the fellas, especially when their bodies are first introduced to large doses of testosterone called puberty.  Come to find out, in high school a lot of the boys around the locker room were full of shit.  I can still remember all the advice about how they will count sheep or go over their favorite baseball team’s roster to keep their mind off having an orgasm.  If they only knew that the chances of their girlfriend being in the 30% of women that can orgasm purely from penetration (in high school this statistic is probably 1% because none of the boys knew what the hell they were doing anyway), they’d enjoy themselves much more.  Or if they knew on average most men only last about 7 minutes before having an orgasm, they wouldn’t put so much pressure on themselves.    

It’s not exactly the most romantic statistic: Almost half of all men finish sex within two minutes, reports the New Republic by way of Dr. Harry Fisch‘s new book, The New Naked: The Ultimate Sex Education for Grown-Ups.

In an excerpt published on Nerve, Fisch notes that his patients are typically fixed on what the normal frequency of sex should be, but that quality — and therefore duration — should be of equal concern. He trots out statistics from previous sex studies to that end: that the length of the average sex act is 7.3 minutes, but an “astonishing” 43% of such acts are completed within 2 minutes.

This isn’t exactly breaking news. Alfred Kinsey determined decades ago that the majority of men ejaculated in 2 minutes or less. (Interestingly enough, a sex therapist recently defined intercourse lasting fewer than 2 minutes as premature ejaculation to the Daily Mail.)

But the New Republic points out that men, not women, are probably more likely to be most bothered by the figure. A 2004 study found that men reported a significantly longer ideal duration of intercourse than did women; both sexes had similar ideas about the ideal foreplay length.

So what’s a guy to do, other than get over it? A Swedish study offers one interesting course of action: Researchers had men who couldn’t make it more than a minute complete 12 weeks of pelvic floor exercises; their average ejaculation time rose nearly five-fold, from 31.7 seconds to 146.2 seconds, reports UPI.  Source: USAToday 

You’d be surprised if they did a study on how women actually prefer sex to be about 7 minutes.  Taking advice from a bunch of kids in a locker room on the idea of what good sex is, is never a good idea.  Ask your woman how long she would prefer you to last, so she is happy and comfortable.  It’s not how long you last, it’s how happy you and your partner are.  Some women (the 70% that can’t orgasm through penetration) are happy just seeing you pleased by their bodies, and if they can’t orgasm themselves through intercourse, the faster you cum, the better.

good sex good sex