Taken altogether, the data suggest that Americans manage to have sex about 30 times per year—or once every 12 days.
Sex can be quite fun. Why do we have so little of it?
Google searches suggest one predominant reason: enormous anxiety, with much of it misplaced.
This summary figure of thirty times a year isn’t so useful because it ignores, most obviously, the distinction between those who are single and those who are in committed relationships. And as everyone knows, how much sex most people want to have decreases the older they get and the longer they’ve been with the same partner.
I had thought my intuition was that that it was safe to assume that people in relatively new relationships are having sex every day and middle-aged married couples are having it once a week, but this should give an average lower than once per 12 days. So either my intuitions about sexuality are wrong or my statistical instincts are misguided.