Time to come clean: 7-second rule is a myth
Regular readers of this column will be well aware that last week my topic was money. Today the subject is something else high on many people’s priority list – sex.
Actually, it’s probably most appropriate to be discussing sex today because June 21 is the shortest day of the year, and tonight is the one in which we are likely to spend the most time in bed.
Whether we spend that sleeping or indulging in rumpy-pumpy is a matter of personal taste. Or luck.
The topic is also apposite because just this week a study has been published that claims that Auckland is high up on the list of the world’s most lustful cities.
When assessing where females are the most sexually active, the report found that Auckland women come third, so to speak, topped only by the inhabitants of the more famous capitals of London and Paris.
Perhaps if Auckland women didn’t have to lie in bed at night worrying about spiralling house prices and traffic congestion they might have finished even higher up the list.
However, while Auckland women are now documented as having extremely satisfying sex lives, it’s probably time to turn to the long-established claim that men think about sex every seven seconds.
This is clearly a ridiculous myth.
Famous men such as Edison wouldn’t have come up with so many wonderful inventions if they had been thinking about sex about eight times a minute.
Fiddling with wires to create an electric light bulb would have been the last thing on his mind – and his phonograph would more likely have been a pornograph.
My assertion that men do sometimes think about things other than sex is backed up by a study in the United States conducted by a team of researchers.
The study found that although men appeared ‘‘to think about more about sex on a daily basis than do women, they also think more about food and sleep’’.
I suppose it’s because this study took place in America that they didn’t add ‘‘sport’’ to the list of men’s preoccupations.
Importantly, the researchers were able to dismiss the sevensecond rule as pure myth.
They didn’t find a single participant who thought about sex (or food and sleep, for that matter) with such regularity.
Unsurprisingly, individuals’ frequency of sexual thoughts varied (probably depending on whether there were any big matches on the telly).
The statistics from this study make interesting reading.
Apparently, during a seven-day period women’s sexual thoughts ranged from one to 140 a day, giving an average of 18.6 and a median of 9.9. (You can tell this was a serious study from the statistics).
I’m sure the poor lady who could summon up only one sexual thought a day was put off by all the technical jargon of the researchers.
For instance, their report is littered with phrases like ‘‘needsbased cognitions’’ and ‘‘erotophilia’’, which, as I’m sure you know, means not feeling guilty about talking openly about sex.
The author of the study, Kristen Jozkowski Ph.D (Ph.D does NOT stand for ‘‘Phallic Diatribe, by the way), summed up: ‘‘I think two myths have been dispelled with these data. First women, too, think about sex quite often! (the emphasis is hers not mine). And perhaps women think about sex even more often than is turning up in these data due to factors related to social desirability.
‘‘Second, although men (and women) may be preoccupied with sexual thoughts, they are certainly not consumed with sexual thoughts every seven seconds such that they cannot think of anything else.
‘‘So, the old adage that a man cannot concentrate on what someone is saying because his mind is filled with sexual thoughts seems to be false. Time to come up with other excuses!’’
Well, of course, because the study completely missed the obvious possibility that men are probably being inattentive because they’re wondering if the All Blacks can beat the British Lions, or whether Jose Mourinho can turn Manchester United into a major force in English football again.
And, if this study is to be believed, it looks like most men are just looking forward to a decent feed and a good sleep tonight.