Sex – For The Record, I Prefer 25 Minutes, 53 Seconds

– Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com Porn For Women

As I’ve noted before, if there’s one thing I love (almost) as much as absurd headlines, it’s ridiculous sex surveys. When it comes to taking a rich, complex, magical, many-splendored thing like sex and reducing it to a “Who Farted?” bumper-sticker level of nuance, nothing beats an online survey.

The most recent of such surveys to catch my eye comes courtesy of SaucyDates.com, which asked its respondents “How Long Does Sex Last?”

Ok, I’ll admit, technically that’s just the title of the survey; the actual questions put to those who responded to this survey were “The last time you had sex (intercourse, NOT foreplay), how long did it last?” and “How long would you like sex (intercourse, NOT foreplay) to last?”

An Average Is Not The Same Thing As A Consensus

One of the things I like best about sex surveys has little to do with the surveys or their responses, and more to do with how the media interprets the survey results.

For example, The Sun’s takeaway from from SaucyDates’ survey is “Women want sex to last for 25 minutes 51 seconds, new research finds.”

To hear the Sun tell it, this survey reveals “exactly how long men of different ages ‘last’ in the sack – as well as how long women would like sex to go on for.”

At the risk of seeming excessively pedantic, this is not what the SaucyDates survey reveals. The survey reveals the average response to questions about those two things, across a respondent pool of 3,836 people.

Also, because the people who administered the survey didn’t specify how many respondents were women, how many were men, or how many hail from each of the countries listed in the infographic, we’re left to guess as to how representative each of these results really is for the demographic it covers.

Yes, I know; for many people putting any thought into analyzing the results of a dumb little sex survey kills the fun of reading those results – but for me, it’s all part of the enjoyment.

Come to think of it, the same sort of (possibly twisted) reasoning explains why, back when I was in college, I found guys’ pickup lines less interesting than trying to figure out why they thought those lines would work.

I’m Starting To Suspect My Husband Is Secretly A Young Adult Indian

I suppose it’s not possible, considering we’ve been married almost 20 years now, but if it weren’t for that pesky fact, right about now I would be strongly suspecting my husband is secretly an 18 year-old from India.

According to the “Country Performance with Age” portion of the SaucyDates infographic, intercourse with an Indian male who’s 18 lasts around 13 to 13.5 minutes, on average. True, this would make my husband a somewhat below average Indian teenager, but it sure meshes better with my observations than the 15.5 to 16 minutes an American man his age allegedly averages.

(As a certain, recently-dismissed professional sport coach might put it, take that for data!)

I’d love to claim my husband’s inability to hold off his orgasms flows from his ongoing excitement at the prospect of making love to me, and an enthusiasm which simply overcomes him, but this seems inconsistent with him frequently changing the channel on the TV at the nine-minute mark during our (obviously oh-so-passionate) lovemaking sessions.

Why Doesn’t Foreplay (Or Oral, At Least) Count?

Naturally, since I’m a mean, horrible person, I’ve shared my observations about his lack of sexual stamina with my husband and asked for his reaction to my analysis. Of course, because he’s a man beyond shame (and beyond caring, at this stage of his middle-aged manhood), rather than protest I’ve got the numbers all wrong, he just shrugged and said “I think foreplay should count – or that oral should figure into things too, at the very least.”

You know, I hate to admit it, but he’s got a point.

I mean, if we’re going to comprehensively crunch the sexual numbers here, I really ought to get credit for the time I spend with my lips wrapped around his penis – and considering that I’m quite experienced and expert at it, it’s only fair he that he receives some credit for not immediately ejaculating in my mouth when I do so.