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All sex facts / The numbers

About once a week, and falling

26,620 adults over four decades. The line goes down.

About once a week, and falling — Photo: Claudio Elias · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

American adults reported having sex an average of 54 times a year in the 2010s — roughly once a week. In the late 1990s the same survey recorded 62. The decline shows up in every age group, every marital status, and every region, which rules out most of the easy explanations.

The largest single driver is that more people are living without a partner, and partnered people are having sex less often than partnered people used to. Married people still report more than the unmarried, but the gap narrowed as married frequency fell faster.

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Far more than swinging, and far more than most people assume.

A third have tried it, and the number has doubled

One of the fastest-changing figures in sex research.

The sex-toy guide

A shop has two hundred of them. One of them is right for you.

Seven questions: who it is for, what sounds appealing, how quiet it has to be, what it may cost. Out comes one type — with what to look for, what it costs, and what nobody prints on the box.

Sixteen types, from a bullet vibrator to a blindfold
No brands, no shop, nothing for sale here
Two minutes, and nothing is saved

Start the seven questions For the two of you

Find out what you both want — without either of you saying it first.

You each answer twenty questions on your own, and neither of you ever sees the other’s answers. Only what you both said yes or maybe to comes back. A no and a maybe look identical from outside, so saying no costs nothing — which is what makes the answers honest.

Six sets of twenty questions — three by depth, three by subject
An evening you can actually plan, built from what you agreed on
No account, no names, and it deletes itself after a few days

Open Let’s talk about sex

General information, not medical advice. Anything persistent or painful belongs with a doctor, who has heard it before.