Sex Survey Results 2015

InsideHook conducted this online survey of its readers between January 15th and 23rd, 2015. The 5,513 respondents self-selected and self-identified as men 18 and above. Sixty-four percent were above 30 years of age. Forty-seven percent were married, 24% in a relationship, 22% single and 7% divorced. Because of rounding, some percentages may not add up to 100.

Young or old, straight (90% of respondents), bisexual (5%) or gay (4%), the average response to “How would you rate your sex life?” was 5.94. Just like most people think they’re a good driver, they also think they’re above average in bed.

Over 32% of male respondents say they’ve had 51 or more sexual partners in their lifetime. This seems slightly inflated, especially compared to numbers from the CDC, which found (with the benefit of scientific polling and analysis) that 21.6% of men 15-44 years of age have had 15 or more female sexual partners. That said, it’s a statistical fact that men lie when taking sex surveys. So who’re you dissembling to, friend: us or the government?

When asked to choose one quality that described their perfect mate, the top choices were fun (17%), attractive (15%), caring (14%), smart (13%) and adventurous (12%). Men looked for a successful woman only 4% of the time.

When we cross-referenced by political affiliation, we found the highest disparity in the “successful” category. Thirty-five percent of Republicans chose “successful,” compared to just 24% of Democrats and 2% of Independents. Sixteen percent of Independents wanted a woman who is adventurous, compared to 11% of Democrats and 9% of Republicans. It seems Independents want to have slightly less fun than everyone else.

The top three answers to this question, across all age groups and persuasions, were “sex,” “blow jobs,” and “erotic massages.” No surprises there. 

But when we cross-referenced by relationship status, we found that single people scored high for “tenderness” and “rough play.” Divorced respondents, meanwhile, want a good laugh.

Couples are more likely these days to experiment with — or at least talk about — previously verboten topics like threesomes and couples sharing. One of those couples wrote to our sex columnist (and acclaimed TED speaker), Esther Perel, about how to bring other people into their bedroom. If you’re looking to experiment with your partner, here’s what Esther suggests.

Meanwhile, when it comes to fantasies, 28% of men say they’re most likely to fantasize about “my significant other,” 20% said “a friend,” and 13% said “a celebrity.” The next most popular answers, at 12%, were write-ins. These are some of our favorites. Looks like everybody’s into strangers.

As for where these men are looking for those strangers:

For this survey, we didn’t define “kinky” — a colloquial term for unconventional, non-vanilla sexual practices — and allowed readers to plot where they thought they were on the scale. 

The average kinkiness score, on a scale of 1 to 10, was 6.46. Once again, most people think they’re just a bit above the midline.

Ninety-two percent of our respondents said they watched porn. That’s at the high end of most estimates, which range from 50% to 99% of men, as reported by the APA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology. Oddly enough, just under 1% of men in the United States are blind.

The 77% of men who said “No” are right, at least according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which doesn’t acknowledge that pornography addiction exists as a behavioral disorder. 

But despite the lack of clinical definition, excessive porn consumption almost certainly has repercussions, as one of your correspondent’s favorite New York Magazine features so cleverly reveals: “He’s Just Not That Into Anyone.” 

For further reading, your editors also suggest Sam Parker’s excellent piece in Esquire on the NoFap subreddit.

Sex toys, to borrow a buffoonish Star Trek metaphor, used to be the final frontier. Now, they’re de rigueur. Especially in emergency rooms, where sex toy injuries surged after Fifty Shades of Grey. 

We’d be poor editors, however, if we didn’t note that Fifty Shades is an awful way to begin learning about fetish life. 

Polyamory is when people take on multiple relationships, and it has surprisingly women-friendly roots.

Polyamory seems to be on the rise in the United States, to judge by the media attention and flowering of alternative lifestyles in the tech and Burner subcultures. For a good persepctive on the history of polyamory, we suggest The Lifestyle: A Look at the Erotic Rites of Swingers. For understanding sexual desire in the modern monogamous relationship, you can do no better than Perel’s Mating in Captivity.

Orgasmic meditation, or OMing, as it’s called, is a new-age, healthy living practice in which a woman has her clitoris gently stroked for 15 minutes in order to prolong therapeautic orgasms. The most popular proponent of OMing is Nicole Daedone, through her company, OneTaste. If you’re interested, we recommend exploring her YouTube videos.

And now, some write-ins from our readers.

Just for fun, we asked our readers to tell us what they thought the hottest spots in New York, LA, San Francisco and Chicago were.For the record, the editors and staff strongly disagree with awarding Shake Shack the lunchtime home of the most attractive patrons. That award goes to Sweetgreen.