On your mark, get set … COME!
Cats: Ilona's Take|According to a recently-published study, American and Canadians think the best sex lasts 15 - 20 minutes.
Gee, wow. A whole 20 minutes? Be still my heart.
Is this just me, or does that seem a bit … miserly? I mean, sure, there’s a good, solid place for good, solid meat-and-potatoes sex. No fuss, no muss, just get us both there so we can both get some sleep. Nothing wrong with that. But “best”?
Ask people what their favourite everyday meal is, and they’re not going to say champagne and cavier. It’s nice once in a while, but you’re not going to want to have it three meals a day, every day. It’s a treat, not sustenance. Similarly two-hour sex.
Still, put those same people in a nice restaurant with a varied and delectable menu, and most of them will probably try something a little more venturesome than meat-and-potatoes. Because the everyday, though nutritious, lacks a little panache, a little flair.
So, ask someone what the best sex is — are they going to tell you what they usually do, or something a little better than normal? Looking at it from the other end: If the people surveyed think 15 - 20 minutes is best, what’s normal for them?
Normal is about half the cited ‘best’, according to this same study: 7 - 13 minutes, with three being “acceptable”.
Three minute sex. Frankly, if sex is going to last three minutes, I think I’d rather just take matters into my own hands. It hardly seems worth the sweat and the mess of getting another body involved for a measly three minutes.
Three-minute sex is what happens when he’s interested and you’re not particularly, but you decide, “oh, what the hell”, because hey, you love this guy and he’s feeling needy and his needs are valid and it’s not such a huge imposition. So long as it doesn’t take too long. Don’t worry about me, dear, I’m just enjoying being here with you, you go right on ahead, quick like a bunny!
Three-minute sex is about climax and nothing else. Which, assuming you can come in three minutes, has its place on the sexual menu. Just not as a mainstay.
Of course, back in the fifties, a man’s virility was measured by how quickly he climaxed. These days, if the drek in my spam file is anything to go by, virility is measured by “the size of his schlong”, his “male aggregate”, “hot rod”, or “baseball bat”. (Good lord. There’s an image to make you break out in a sweat. Too bad it’s a cold one.)
But back then it was speed, not size, that mattered. You know how we mock the women of our mother’s and grandmother’s generations for their purported disinterest in sex? How they’d just lie back and count ceiling tiles till it was over? Not that they’d have time to count a helluva lot of them, if their husband was exceedingly “virile”. Who could get excited by three minutes of cursory foreplay followed by two more of furious pumping?
With that as their experience of sex, who can blame them if they preferred the far more creative pursuits of planning the bathroom reno while hubby chugged away to his finish line?
Huh. You know? With that as our sexual starting point, 15 - 20 minutes is beginning to sound a whole lot more like real sex.
