Sex therapist Vanessa Marin breaks down survey results from 6,000+ people on how long sex actually lasts. Most reported 6-10 minutes of intercourse and 11-20 minutes total, but wanted 21-30 minutes overall. The real answer: talk to your partner instead of chasing a number.
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No, we can't start a video today. We are coming at you with a very big question.
Yes.
Which is, how long should sex last?
Oh, yeah.
So we polled our Instagram audience about this recently. We asked them to tell us how long the overall experience lasts for them if they have intercourse, how long intercourse in specific lasts, and also how long everybody wants it to last.
Yeah, that's the important question, right? Yeah.
We wanted to get a sense of, are people having the duration of sex that they want to be having? So we have taken a look at the answers, and some of the data just might surprise you. So we thought we had to make a video going into this. So first, we're curious to know, have you ever wondered, like, how long is sex supposed to be? Like, am I doing this right? Let us know down in the comments below if that's ever something that's crossed your mind.
All right, so if you're brand new to our channel, we first want to introduce ourselves. This is Vanessa. I'm Xander Marin. Vanessa is a sex therapist. I'm a regular dude. We've been together for 14 years. Also, if you see them, these cute little faces behind us or to our sides are our cute little pugs, Maggie and Winston.
And our account is all about giving you the tools, tips and techniques that you need to create a truly extraordinary relationship inside of the bedroom and out. So if you are interested in that, then just hit that subscribe button.
Just do it.
Just go ahead and subscribe to this channel. All right, so let's get into this survey. Like I said, we shared it with our Instagram audience, and so far, over 6,000 people have responded to it. So we got a lot of data from. All right, let me tell you a little bit about the survey. So first, we told people we're going to be asking you questions about your sex life, and sex means whatever you want it to mean. So when we asked about, like, how long does a sex session last for you on average? We're talking the very beginning, to the very end of whatever feels like sex for you. We did also ask questions about intercourse in particular, if that's a part of your sex life, like, how long does the intercourse aspect of it last? So we gave people different time ranges, and here are some of the results. So the most common response that people gave when we were talking about the length of intercourse in particular was about six to 10 minutes. And then the most common response for the whole experience overall was 11 to 20 minutes. Now, I wanna say these are probably inflated numbers for a few Reasons. First of all, I think that a lot of us don't wanna admit that sex is on the shorter end for us. I think there is a belief that it's small, supposed to be long. We'll talk about that in a minute. That I think people tend to want to say it is lasting longer than it is. Also, humans are notoriously bad at estimating time. So we didn't ask anybody to, like, take a stopwatch and, you know, time yourself. Exactly. We said, on average, how long do you think you spend?
I know it's hard for me to keep track of time. Sometimes it feels like it's a really long time. And then afterwards, they look at the.
Clock and like, oh, okay. So I've seen some studies that have said that humans tend to overestimate time. Like, we double it, so we think it's five minutes, but actually it's like two and a half minutes. And this sort of lines up with other surveys that I've seen about how long sex lasts. On average, with the intercourse in particular, I've seen the number three to five minutes. So our number, remember, was six to 10 minutes. So that actually fits in just about perfectly if we're kind of overestimating ourselves.
All right. But the real question is, how long do people want sex to last? How long do people want intercourse to last? So we ask people those questions, and we gave them the same time ranges that they could respond with. So the most common response for how long someone wants intercourse to last was six to 10 minutes, which is exactly the same thing that people reported for how long it is lasting. So in general, more or less, people seem to be satisfied with the length of time they're spending on intercourse. However, when we asked about how long do you want all of the sex to last, people? All the sex people responded 21 to 30 minutes. So if you remember, they responded, I think it was 11 to 20 for how long it actually is lasting. So that implies that people are wanting to be spending more time on the overall experience. I think a lot of us get in our heads about wanting the intercourse to last longer. Maybe the real answer is we just want the experience to last longer.
So we are still gathering data. We also asked a bunch of other questions on the survey, and we're breaking it down by like, does people's orientation matter whether or not they have kids? Does that factor into it? So we would love. We'd love for you to take the survey too. We will put. Put the link to it in the description box down below. And we'll be sending out a more detailed report, really going into more of those numbers and analysis of it.
All right, so another really important thing we wanted to cover is the general misalignment in male and female pairings in terms of the expectations around how long sex should last. So men tend to think that they should be lasting way longer than they do, especially when it comes to. To intercourse. And the problem is they kind of mistakenly, mistakenly equate longer sex with better sex. And that's kind of normal. Like, that's what you see in movies. That's what your friends tend to be talking about. I know personally, like, in high school and in college, like, so many of my guy friends are bragging about, like, oh, yeah, we did it all night. Or like, you know, you're supposed to last all night. We get this idea in our head that we are supposed to perform in a certain way for a certain amount of time. And then we start getting really worked up about this because, you know, you've probably had this experience. You start having sex, you get really excited, you come quickly, and then you get really anxious, oh, my God, I need to be lasting longer. I should be lasting for an hour or whatever it is. And you just start this cycle of performance anxiety.
But the really interesting thing that we noticed is we asked another question that said, would you rather be having more sex but shorter or longer sex, fewer time? So kind of comparing the frequency and the duration of it, and the vast majority of people said that they would rather be having more sex but for shorter time periods each time.
Interesting.
Yes. We think that this is a really interesting conversation for couples to have with each other. And I think the survey provides a nice conversation opener. You can ask your partner, hey, let's both take this survey. We actually talked about our answers ourselves of, like, what our ideal is. And I think, like Xander was saying, there's just this misalignment in a lot of couples where, you know, sexual duration, it's not really something we ever talk about. Right. So a. A lot of us are on different pages about how long we want it to last, but we think our partner wants it to last for this long. So it's great to just have a conversation with your partner and say, yeah, what does it feel like for you? What's your ideal duration? Bottom line with this, though, is that there is no right or magic number. You're not a better person if you're spending longer on sex and less time on sex. But it's just a really interesting conversation that you can have with your partner. All right, so that wraps up our video on how long sex should last.
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And on a personal note, we just wanted to take a minute to say that this is our last video in this location.
Yes. In this. With this backdrop.
Yeah, with this backdrop, we are moving. And by the time this video gets released, we record these ahead of time. So we will already have moved. We'll be in a new location, and the next video you see will have a totally different backdrop. So we just wanted to take a moment to say thanks for joining along for the ride with us. Thanks for joining us literally in our living room and watching us get comfortable in front of the camera and make more and more of these videos for you. So thanks for watching and we'll see you next time from a brand new location.
