Short Sex Is Pretty Normal

It's not exactly the most romantic statistic: Almost half of all men finish sex within two minutes, reports the New Republic by way of Dr. Harry Fisch's new book, The New Naked: The Ultimate Sex Education for Grown-Ups. In an excerpt published on Nerve, Fisch notes that his patients are typically fixed on what the normal frequency of sex should be, but that quality—and therefore duration—should be of equal concern. He trots out statistics from previous sex studies to that end: that the length of the average sex act is 7.3 minutes, but an "astonishing" 43% of such acts are completed within 2 minutes. This isn't exactly breaking news. Alfred Kinsey determined decades ago that the majority of men ejaculated in 2 minutes or less. (Interestingly enough, a sex therapist recently defined intercourse lasting fewer than 2 minutes as premature ejaculation to the Daily Mail.)

But the New Republic points out that men, not women, are probably more likely to be most bothered by the figure. A 2004 study found that men reported a significantly longer ideal duration of intercourse than did women; both sexes had similar ideas about the ideal foreplay length. So what's a guy to do, other than get over it? A Swedish study offers one interesting course of action: Researchers had men who couldn't make it more than a minute complete 12 weeks of pelvic floor exercises; their average ejaculation time rose nearly five-fold, from 31.7 seconds to 146.2 seconds, reports UPI. (More sex stories.)