Porn can be blamed for a lot of pathologies and false ideas about sex: That women love anal; that we like to have our pussies spat upon or smacked; that men need to bone as if they’re literally filming a porn. But I think one of the biggest myths it’s responsible for is that women expect a gentleman on the streets and a marathon runner in the sheets. So how long should a man last in bed?
I’m all for a robust sex sesh, but I’m not gonna lie, at right about minute 22 of intercourse (or “Pound Town” as one of my friends refers to it), I start thinking about what I want to eat for dinner (or breakfast — I’m one of those freaks who loves morning sex).
Him: You like that, baby?
Me: Oh yeah, you’re so deep. I’m craving Thai. I love the way that cock feels. I’m getting pineapple curry as soon as he cums — is he even close?
Believe it or not (I couldn’t), some dudes don’t come that easily. Maybe it’s condoms. Maybe it’s meds. Maybe it’s too much masturbating and porn. Maybe their sperm has stage fright. Maybe they’re so emotionally unavailable even their dick can’t let its guard down. But for whatever reason, try as you both might, the jizz remains on lockdown, the orgasm elusive.
About a year ago I was dating a guy — we’ll call him “5K” — who had a severe case of delayed ejaculation or “rock cock” as it’s aptly called. No matter how long I blew him, screwed him or jerked him off, it didn’t matter, he could only achieve orgasm about one out of every ten sessions.
He assured me it wasn’t for lack of desire, and so, we decided to bang our way through whatever the block was, which led to marathon sex sessions. But about 45 minutes in — after reverse-cowgirl; the “lazy boy” (on the side, one leg thrown over his leg); doggystyle; bridge pose; and even slow, intimate (read: creepy), missionary — I was dry, bored and hungry.
Him?
Still hard.
Most people would kill for this kind of lover, right? What was wrong with me? Isn’t that why Viagra was a billion dollar industry? (Nope. It’s because old men can’t get it up.) It did get me thinking, though: How long is too long? (The duration of sex, naturally, not dick size.)
The best study done to date on “intravaginal ejaculation latency time” was completed in 2005. Researchers had 500 couples from all over the world, over a four-week period, spice up their love life by taking a stopwatch and literally hitting “start” when the penis inserted into the vagina and “stop” when the man ejaculated. Super sexy stuff, I know.
Not surprisingly, researchers found a huge variety in the times, ranging from as low as 33 seconds to as high as 44 minutes, proving there really isn’t such a thing as a “normal” amount of time people spend in Pound Town. The median time was 5.4 minutes, which is almost a full 2.5 minutes longer than back in the 1940s when famous sex researcher Alfred Kinsey deduced that three-quarters of men finished within two minutes.
Progress!
For my own unscientific study, earlier this week, I put out the call on social media, asking the ladies, “Not including foreplay, how long is too long for the duration of sex?”
One woman immediately replied and said, “Any man who says, ‘I’m gonna rock your world all night, baby,’ hasn’t had that much sex with women.”
Overall, there seemed to be a vast difference in the desired amount of time one has for sex depending on if the respondent was single or married. Two single women said that their ideal trip to Pound Town was “three hours,” but I feel like only a person having sex occasionally would say that because no one having sex on the reg has time for daily, three-hour sexcapades.
That said, there did seem to be some unity among the women I surveyed (about 40 of them in all). Some of my favorite replies:
- “If I’m having sex longer than 35 minutes, I’m over that shit. And if I don’t come in the first five, I’m definitely over it.”
- “The pleasing me part starts first. There’s no time duration for that. The sex part after should be under 10 mins. I could be in and out from beginning to end in 11–15 mins I’d say… with prob 8 of those minutes focused solely on me.”
- “I start thinking about tax refunds at minute 12. Money keeps me enthusiastic.”
- “Straight pounding? 22 minutes.”
- “Anything more than 30 minutes starts to reach the ‘hurry the fuck up’ point.”
- “Five and a half minutes of actual sex. I’ve already long orgasmed by then, even 20 minutes would be too long. I’m tired.”
Most of the men who replied said something along the lines of, “Please say three minutes! Please say three minutes! Please say three minutes!”
This struck me as brutally honest. In my experience, a majority of men exert a great amount of energy during coitus trying not to cum too quickly. And don’t get me wrong, on the scale of sexual conditions a man can experience, I’ll take rock cock over premature ejaculation or erectile dysfunction. But 5K’s inability to climax fucked with my head more than I thought it would. I had no idea how much of my sexual self-worth and identity was invested in my ability to readily and quickly make a man cum.
It shook the very foundation of my entire delusion that I was some kind of otherworldly sex goddess, and as a result, I started feeling uninspired to have sex because I felt like I had somehow failed. I realize that sex shouldn’t be goal-oriented, but it bothered me on a level far deeper than my brain or feelings. This was some gut-level frustration that was hard to shake. Turns out, men aren’t the only ones who get insecure about leaving their mate sexually frustrated. Fancy that.
The moral of the story: We all think we want to have sex for the average length of a porn scene, but in reality, the average man is lucky to last seven minutes and most women seem to be content to finish somewhere between 10 to 30 minutes of knockin’ boots.
The giant caveat being that you can really only get away with a five-minute roll-in-the-hay if you take care of her first during foreplay. If not, you’re what we ladies refer to as a “lazy one pump chump.” The jury might be hung in regards to how long is too long, but it’s case closed on how short is too short: And it’s when you climax before she does.
Bridget Phetasy
Bridget Phetasy is a contributing writer at MEL. She formerly wrote for Playboy.
