This is how long an average sexual encounter lasts

Many people say that sex is like pizza: even if it's not a good pizza, it's still pizza, so it's always sufficient. I don't necessarily agree with that, because sometimes a pizza is just really bad (with pineapple as a topping, for example) and sometimes sex is just not quite what you hoped for. This can be because you as individuals just really don't seem to be on the same page, making the whole encounter feel mostly awkward, or it lasts too short, or just too long.

But what is too short and what is too long? When there's alcohol involved, I often hear girlfriends complain that it ‘takes hours for him to finish’ and I always feel sorry for them, because at some point, you're just a bit done with it. Of course, it's a very different matter when the end of a sexual encounter is characterized in 99 percent of cases by a man's climax, because I do hope that at some point the female orgasm is considered at least just as important.

But okay, let's stick to that male ejaculation for now. How long do they usually last? That was also a question psychologist Dr. Brendan Zietsch wondered about, and he conducted a study among 500 couples. These couples came from different countries (the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Turkey) and they were given a very simple task: time your sexual encounter and report the data. The male ejaculation was in this case indicative of the end.

The times varied quite a bit, to say the least: the shortest session lasted no more than 33 seconds and the longest 44 minutes. I don't think either of those is ideal, but it turned out to be quite difficult to investigate how long we all have sex. But anyway, Dr. Brendan Zietsch was able to establish an average thanks to these 500 couples.

And that is 5.4 minutes. Well, I secretly think that's quite short. Admittedly: they had to start the timer at the moment penetration occurred. Reading this, all 500 couples must have had incredibly romantic encounters thanks to this Dr. Brendan Zietsch.

Fun detail: Turkey was the big outlier among all countries, as sex there lasted an average of 3.7 minutes, while the times from the other countries were fairly similar. Additionally, they looked at whether a condom has any influence on duration (no), experience (also not), or age (that one does: the older, the shorter the duration of sex).

So if your partner says that he/she ‘doesn't have time right now’ or that he/she ‘has to get up early tomorrow’: that excuse no longer holds. It's not even six minutes of your life, but please don't forget to also give the woman an orgasm. 

Source: HLN.be