How Long Should You Really Be Lasting During Sex? Not as Long as You Think

We've been tricked into thinking 'real men' last for hours. But this simply is not true - by Bray Stoneham

Remember the times during high school when you and your friends first started noticing girls and having sex, and there were always a few who'd toot their own horn a bit too loud?

"I can last for three hours and go over and over again!", one would say. "Three hours!? That's nothing, I can go for six, you loser," another would reply.

Sadly, as an adult, as you read this you probably still have a few friends like that who come to mind. But how long should you really be lasting?

A Journal of Sexual Medicine study took 500 couples from five different countries - Netherlands, UK, Spain, Turkey and the USA - who were in a "stable heterosexual relationship" for at least 6 months, and timed the time of their romps for 4 weeks. Romantic, huh?

So just how long did they last?

"The median length of sexual intercourse was 5.4 minutes," reports the study. It's important to note that these times don't include foreplay, just actual intercourse.

And the older the couples got, the shorter their sex lasted.

"The median decreased significantly with age, from 6.5 minutes in the 18-30 years group, to 4.3 minutes in the group older than 51 years," the study says.

So it turns out your friends were – and likely still are – big, fat phonies. Especially if they happened to be Turkish - Turkish men were the quickest finishers, clocking an average of 3.7 minutes.