Advertisement
Sex and relationships
LifestyleHealth & Wellness

How much sex is normal? Quality, quantity and types discussed with real women

  • Surveys are one thing, but how much sex do people really have? Anthea Rowan invites round four friends, plies them with wine, and finds out
  • But sex therapist Nikki Green says that how much is the wrong question to ask – it’s satisfaction levels that we should be focusing on instead

Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
A Hong Kong sexual-marital therapist maintains that it’s not how about much sex you are having, it’s the quality of it. Photo: Alamy
Anthea Rowan

How much sex are you having? This is a question posed by dozens of surveys and studies every year in a bid to find the average: how many times a week, month or year the average person has sex.

Dozens of “surveys” suggest different numbers as “normal” – though this is among the most personal of statistics and we are all wildly different.

Lifestyle magazine Vice canvassed nearly 2,000 of its Australian millennial readers last year and discovered 30 per cent were having sex a couple of times a week, and nearly a quarter more than that. Forty-two per cent would like to have sex three or four times a week, and more than 30 per cent would have it every day if they could.

Advertisement
The Global Better Sex Survey in Asia, published 10 years ago, concluded that, of the 3,538 Asian respondents (1,776 men and 1,762 women) who took part, men were having sex 5.1 times a month and women four times a month. And they would all have liked to have more.
When sex suddenly becomes a chore there may be trouble ahead for a relationship. Photo: Alamy
When sex suddenly becomes a chore there may be trouble ahead for a relationship. Photo: Alamy
Advertisement

When asked how much sex we should be having, Nikki Green, a Hong Kong-based psychotherapist and sexual-marital therapist, said it’s a perennial question.

Advertisement
Select Voice
Choose your listening speed
Get through articles 2x faster
1.25x
250 WPM
Slow
Average
Fast
1.25x