We hereby take a break from the female reproductive cycle to ask:
How’s your sex life?
How do you FEEL about your sex life?
More importantly, how does your SEX THERAPIST feel about your sex life?
Corty EW, Guardiani JM. “Canadian and American sex therapists’ perceptions of normal and abnormal ejaculatory latencies: how long should intercourse last?” Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2008.
Of course, you might not think that your sex therapists opinion had much to do with your sex life, but really, it does. After all, people who study sex will provide the prevailing wisdom on how often is often enough and how long is long enough. So the opinion of your sex therapist could have a lot to do with how you perceive your OWN sex life. Which could have a lot to do, in turn, with how your sex life is. You might think your sex life is just fine, thank you, until your therapist turns to you with furrowed brow and says “you only last HOW long?”
Yikes.
What you really need to know is whether the opinion of your sex therapist matches up with what the majority of the population actually experiences in terms of their sex lives. You want to make sure your therapist is basing his opinions of your sexual complaints on reality.
So what to do? Poll the sex therapists, of course.
These authors asked a bunch of sex therapists their opinions on what duration of sexual intercourse they thought was “adequate,””desirable,””too short,” or “too long.” Keep in mind, by “sexual intercourse”, we mean time spent penis in vagina and thrusting.
And what did they come up with?
So you can see that “adequate” was around 3-7 min, “desirable” around 7-13 min, “too short” from 1-2 min, and “too long” from 10-30.
The study concluded that the therapists opinions on the subject were consistent with objective data on ejaculation latency, in that they think 3-13 min is normative.
But Sci was curious (like normal). So she compared these results to the ones she covered back in December of 2009 (not so long ago), when they gave a bunch of guys stopwatches to see how long they really took.
The average there? 5 min. So the “adequate” designation of the sex therapists apparently matches right up. However, it appears that the “desirable” designation (7-13 min) does not.
See the graph
Judging from the way the graph falls off, Sci would think “desirable” would be around 7 min, maybe 7-9, but 13 seems a bit much.
It looks like the sex therapists had a good idea of what ejaculation latency looks like at the lower end, but 13 minutes is still more than a little bit high.
But this leaves Sci with a question. A very, very important question. What about the WOMEN!? We know what’s normal, and we know what’s “desirable” for the males, but do women want to be humped for 13 minutes straight? After all, it takes two to tango. Sci wants to see that study!
Corty, E., & Guardiani, J. (2008). Canadian and American Sex Therapists’ Perceptions of Normal and Abnormal Ejaculatory Latencies: How Long Should Intercourse Last? The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 5 (5), 1251-1256 DOI: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2008.00797.x
