How often, really
How often people have sex at different ages, how that has changed over the decades, and the point where more stops making couples any happier. The data come from national surveys designed to represent whole populations.
A year at your pace
Pick how often you have sex and set your age. Each square is one day of the year.
Averages by age come from 26,620 Americans in the General Social Survey (1989 to 2014): about 80 times a year in their 20s, 60 by 45 and 20 by 65, with a peak around 25. The survey never defined "sex", and people answered in bands, so treat the numbers as approximate.
A typical month in Britain
Britain's national sex survey asked 16 to 44 year olds how many times they had sex in the past month. The typical answer was 3, and fewer than half had sex at least once a week.
The happiness curve
Across three studies of 30,645 people, couples who had sex more often were happier, but only up to about once a week. Beyond that, more sex wasn't linked to any more happiness.
The curve shows the shape of the finding, not exact values. The gap in well-being between having sex less than once a month and once a week was bigger than the gap between earning $15,000 to $25,000 and $50,000 to $75,000 a year. It's also a two-way street: happier couples have more sex. When a separate experiment asked couples to double how often they had sex, they didn't become happier.
Over the decades
In both the US and Britain, people are having sex less often than they were around 2000, and the biggest change is among young men.
Times a year, US adults
General Social Survey
No sex in the past month, Britain, ages 16 to 44
National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles
No sex in the past year, US, ages 18 to 24
General Social Survey
Why it's falling
More people are single
In 1986, 66% of American adults lived with a partner. By 2014 it was 59%. People without a steady partner have sex about half as often.
Couples have less sex too
Married Americans went from about 73 times a year around 1990 to about 55 in 2014. In Britain, the biggest falls were among people over 25 and those married or living together.
It's generational
The decline was mainly a birth-cohort effect: people born in the 1990s had sex least often, even after allowing for age. It wasn't explained by longer working hours or by porn use.
Life circumstances matter
Young men who were unmarried, on lower incomes, or not in full-time work were more likely to have had no sex in the past year. In Britain, people in better physical and mental health had sex more often.
Many people want more
As frequency fell in Britain, the share of people saying they'd like sex more often went up. Mismatched wants are common, not a sign that something is wrong.
What the numbers can't show
These surveys count how often, not how good. They mostly don't define sex, rely on memory, and cover mainly heterosexual adults.
Myths about sex, rated
Open any card to see the evidence behind the verdict.
Sources
- Twenge JM, Sherman RA, Wells BE. Declines in sexual frequency among American adults, 1989 to 2014. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2017.
- Wellings K, et al. Changes in, and factors associated with, frequency of sex in Britain: evidence from three National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. BMJ, 2019.
- Ueda P, et al. Trends in frequency of sexual activity and number of sexual partners among adults aged 18 to 44 years in the US, 2000 to 2018. JAMA Network Open, 2020.
- Muise A, Schimmack U, Impett EA. Sexual frequency predicts greater well-being, but more is not always better. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2016.
- Loewenstein G, et al. Does increased sexual frequency enhance happiness? Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2015.
- Waldinger MD, et al. A multinational population survey of intravaginal ejaculation latency time. Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2005.
- WHO, UN Human Rights and UN Women. Eliminating virginity testing: an interagency statement, 2018.
- Kilchevsky A, et al. Is the female G-spot truly a distinct anatomic entity? Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2012.
- Salama S, et al. Nature and origin of "squirting" in female sexuality. Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2015.
- Uloko M, et al. How many nerve fibers innervate the human glans clitoris? Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2023.
Definitions of the terms used here, and details of every study, are on the Sources page.