THE BIG READ
Sunday Times Lifestyle Sex Survey
With over 3,500 respondents, the Sunday Times Lifestyle Sex Survey is now one of the biggest in the country. What we’ve discovered is that South Africans are a funny bunch when it comes to sex. As a nation with conservative underpinnings we tend to approach talk of bumping uglies the same way naughty teenagers would. We get nuggets of information, mix them with myths we’ve learnt in our repressed youths, sprinkle a healthy dose of hyperbole and then skinner about it to our friends. Anecdotal evidence will tell you that, for the most part, we’re pretty reserved when it comes to making the beast with two backs. But the problem with anecdotal evidence is that it tends to come from unreliable sources. For the second year in a row, we have polled South Africans to find out the truth behind our horizontal tango sessions. By FINDING THE RIGHT FREQUENCY
Despite what all your friends, wine bottles and post break-up love songs will tell you, the single life is not all it’s cracked up to be. People in relationships are genital jousting a lot more than their unencumbered counterparts. Of those who responded, 45% of people in a relationship reported having sex at least two to three times a week compared to 19% of singles. In fact 10% of couples have enough energy, somehow, to knock boots on a daily basis. Only 4% of singles have the time and opportunity to get some that often.
Also, it turns out that it’s not the hormonal youths getting all the play, it’s their older siblings and parents. South Africans aged 3140 are doing the most bumping and grinding with 67% of them having sex once a week or more. They’re followed by 41-50 year olds. Traditionally, 31-40 is the age at which people settle down and get married, so this could be motivation for some of you to pop the question and lock down some frequent
“sexy- time miles” — but not so fast: though married people are having a lot of sex, its not necessarily good sex.
Singles have the worst sex lives with their average enjoyment between 1 and 10 coming in at a 5.3, but they’re followed by married folk who rate their sex lives at 6.4. People in unmarried relationships, however, come the closest to continuous exploding fireworks rating their sex lives at a commendable 7.1. This suggests that there is a happy medium between single and married, a place where you are not so interned in bachelorhood that human contact causes you to pop like a champagne cork and not so rooted in the monotony of married life that the idea of your partner’s genitals has connotations of “duty”.