There’s an easy answer to this question—if all partners are satisfied with a sexual session, the objective length of the act is unimportant.
For example, if you were both in the mood for a fast, passion-fueled quickie, a two-minute romp might be just the ticket, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But under typical circumstances, what’s the right amount of time to spend on sex? A 2008 survey offers some insight of sex therapists perceptions of normal.
The 50 therapists surveyed reported the following (highly subjective) conclusions:
- One to two minutes is “too short.”
- Three to seven minutes is “adequate.”
- Seven to thirteen minutes is “good.”
- Up to thirty minutes and beyond is “too much.”
In the view of these therapists, that sexual endurance athlete who bragged about an hour-long sex session may have done so at the expense of his partner‘s enjoyment.
Note that these numbers are just for penetrative vaginal sex—they don’t include time spent on foreplay or other forms of sexual stimulation, which are important in their own right.
Still, in a world where leaked celebrity sex tapes and porn scenes routinely last 20-40 minutes, it’s comforting to know that the threshold for good sex is much, much lower.
How long women want sex to last
But that’s just what therapists say. So what do women say they actually want when it comes to sex?
In a study of 152 heterosexual couples in Canada, researchers found that women said their ideal length of time to spend on sex is 14 minutes on average, which is actually not too far off from what the therapists said.
In addition, women said they’d like to spend an additional 19 minutes on foreplay, for a grand total of 33 minutes of sexual intimacy.
As for the men in this study, their ideal length of time for intercourse is 18 minutes, with an additional 18 minutes spent on foreplay, for a total of 36 minutes.
The good news is that men and women are almost perfectly in line with what they think makes for an ideal sex session—and they both think it’s important to spend equal (if not longer) amounts of time on foreplay as they spend on actual vaginal sex.
Unfortunately, however, these ideals don’t always match up with reality.
How long does sex actually last
In the same Canadian study mentioned above, participants were also asked how long they actually spend on sex.
Women estimated that vaginal intercourse lasts around 7 minutes, with an additional 11 minutes of foreplay. Men provided similar estimates: 8 minutes on sex and 13 minutes on foreplay.
However, those are just estimates and might not be reliable.
So what about when people time how long sex objectively lasts?
A 2005 multinational study looked at 500 heterosexual couples who had been in relationships for at least six months.
They were asked to measure the time of their sex sessions with a stopwatch over a period of four weeks.
The study looked specifically at “intravaginal ejaculation latency time” (IELT), a non-sexy term for the length of time between the moment vaginal sex begins and ejaculation occurs.
The IELT measurements varied wildly, ranging from 33 seconds to 44 minutes.
However, the average sex time of the study participants clocked in at 5.4 minutes.
A 2009 Dutch study found similar results: 474 men from five different countries reported their IELT, with a range of 6 seconds to 52.1 minutes.
The median was six minutes and the average was 5.7 minutes.
When you combine the results of all of these studies, it seems that people estimate that the duration of sex should last longer than it actually does, by at least a couple minutes (7-8 minutes versus 5-6 minutes, respectively).
It takes women longer to reach orgasm — but why?
The IELT only measures how long it takes men—not women—to reach orgasm. So how long does it usually take women?
A 2019 study put the number at 13.4 minutes, which is more than twice as long as the average guy lasts.
However, it’s important to note that this number wasn’t about length of time from penetration to orgasm; rather, it was based on how long it took to reach orgasm following the “intense desire for sex in the presence of erotic stimuli.”
If this male-female orgasm discrepancy sounds bleak, there is a silver lining, which is that 69% of women in one study noted that vaginal sex alone was not sufficient to induce orgasm.
In other words, for most women, orgasms are about more than just penetration.
This is one of the big reasons why so many women place such an emphasis on foreplay: most of them don’t count on vaginal penetration alone for their orgasms during sex.
A 2015 study of women under 35 years of age discovered the following eye-opening facts about the female orgasm during sex:
- 6% of women reported always experiencing orgasm during vaginal sex.
- 40% of women reported usually experiencing orgasm during vaginal intercourse.
- 16% of women reported experiencing orgasm roughly half the time during vaginal sex.
- 38% of women reported infrequently experiencing orgasm during vaginal intercourse.
- 14% of women reported never experiencing orgasm during vaginal sex.
Putting the latter three numbers together, we see that 68% of women say that they reach orgasm half of the time or less during vaginal intercourse.
However, it’s possible to change this state of affairs.
Research finds that women’s odds of orgasm are higher when clitoral stimulation is combined with vaginal penetration.
Women’s odds of orgasm also go up when activities occur other than vaginal intercourse take place during sex, too, especially oral sex.
These findings speak further to the importance of foreplay and why it can’t be overlooked.
