The sext-files We polled 2 000 women and men to find out how your phone affects your love life

We polled 2 000 women and men to find out how your phone affects your love life. Spoiler: you’re all sexting a lot.

think back to your last great date night, and chances are it involved your phone. You SMSED about plans or sent a bunch of emojis to say thank you. Or maybe you called the oldfashioned way! (Although that seems unlikely.) The point is – even if you’ve been married for years, even if you’ve never used a single dating app – your love life is wired. Sometimes it even feels like there are four elements in a relationship: you, your partner and your two phones.

But is this modern ménage-à-quatre a good thing? Or would our love lives really be better off with a little less screen time?

That’s the question that lay behind our poll of 1 000 women and 1 000 men. We also asked them to dish the real details on sexting, phone snooping and everything else. The details (and the sexting stories) await.

We SMS all the time – like, constantly Around 90% of women and men SMS their partner every day. And 43% send their partner at least 10 messages a day.

To be real, not all of those messages are

hot and steamy. “They’re decidedly unromantic,” says Jill, 39, a sales rep. “We SMS about simple things, like what’s for dinner or going to the gym.”

It might seem mundane, but all that planning and emoji-ing is productive because “it keeps people connected,” says Dr Debby Herbenick, associate professor and author of Sex Made Easy (Running Press; R145, ebook). “You take pictures while you travel; you keep in touch when you’re busy at work. It brings the romance back into the relationship, and couples can stay really close in those ways.” But that connection does mean…

… Our phones are always with us A study found 84% of couples sleep with a phone within reach, and 40% said their phones are usually on the table at an intimate dinner.

Phone rules aren’t catching on, either – only 21% of men and women have set limits on phone use around their partner. (“Our only rule is ‘Don’t be annoying,’” says Nadine, 30, writer.) Dr Michelle Drouin, a developmental psychologist who studies technology and relationships, does worry about all this extra phone time: “According to a recent study, 63% of us of have nomophobia – fear of being without the mobile phone,” she says. “We’re addicted.” She urges couples to put devices down whenever possible. “Smsing is a placeholder for a real conversation,” she says. “If your entire relationship happens over SMS, it’s a problem.”

Yes, everyone is sexting A total of 67% of men and women have sent sexy messages and photos to a partner at least once. (And that number, like most of our poll results, does not vary much by gender.)

To be clear: “There’s not just one kind of sexting,” explains Dr Herbenick. “There’s flirty, there’s explicit. There’s cute-sexy photos or naked photos.” That range is great for women who “tend to feel more comfortable sending sexy, but more subtle, photos,” says Dr Herbenick. “Probably for good reason, since women still get ‘slut-shamed’ for expressing their sexuality.”

When writer Jenna Wortham collected real-life sexts for her art project Everybody Sexts, she found that both women and men stayed away from graphic shots. “It wasn’t about sending porn; it was curves, coy images, stuff meant to tantalise.” She adds, “A lot of the straight guys who had sent nude pics were surprised, like, ‘Women didn’t respond to a full-on picture of my crotch.’ Well, yeah!”

And 39% of women and men have exchanged nudes with a partner at least once – with varying results. “I met up with a guy from Facebook,” says Anna, 39, writer, and “the very next day he sent me full-frontal nude photos. Then I found out he was doing that with every girl.” (That ended that.) But Megan, 25, who works in PR, is a little more daring: “I’ve been dating a woman from Cape Town, and we got to chatting at work,” she says. “I found the one private bathroom, took off my top, and did this awesome selfie. But I’d set my shirt in a puddle of water. I walked out, the CEO was waiting for the bathroom and I had a huge spot of water on my chest.” (Don’t worry – she’s still employed.)

And we’re really happy about the sexting A whopping 91% – yes, 91%! – of men and women say that sending their naked photos was a good experience.

This enthusiasm might come as a surprise, given regular headlines about leaked celebrity nudes and ‘revenge porn’. But while 40% of people polled do worry about their photos becoming public someday, they’re not letting that stop them. Instead, they say, sending

67% of men and women have tried sexting (and 36% do it regularly!).