"Sex: Quality Over Quantity?",

By Jennifer Parks

We live in a world where the pursuit of happiness, like all else, has been supersized.

You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much sex, right?

Wrong.

It turns out mother was right when she preached about quality over quantity, even if it wasn't intended as an early education in sexual fulfillment.

Satisfactory sex for couples lasts from three to 13 minutes, not marathon hours, like the popular fantasy many of us buy into, says a survey of Canadian and U.S. sex therapists.The quest for bigger, faster, harder and longer-lasting keeps us perpetually seeking and unsatisfied, when "good sex" is already happening in most of our beds, says the Penn State Erie researcher who led the survey.

"Men don't need rock-hard penises, and sex doesn't have to last all night long to be good," says Dr. Eric Corty. "Even 45 minutes is unrealistic, for both men and women. Soreness and lubrication become an issue. So everyone can just relax. The sex they're having is probably adequate."He's talking about exclusive penis-and-vagina time, not including foreplay or cuddling with your lover afterwards.

The clinical psychiatrist and couples sex therapist queried 50 members of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research on what they considered a normal length of time for sexual intercourse.

The group of psychologists, doctors, social workers and marriage/family therapists, who have collectively seen thousands of patients over several decades, said two minutes for sex was "too short," three to seven minutes was "adequate," seven to 13 minutes was "desirable," and 14 to 30 minutes was "too long."

One-fifth of women report having lubrication problems, and prolonged erections for men -- of an hour or more -- are not healthy anyway, says Corty. Sex doesn't have to be long-lasting to be good. In fact, duration has nothing to do with it, apart from extreme cases of rapid or delayed ejaculation in men, says a Toronto sex therapist and society member, who gives little weight to Corty's survey.

"Surveys like this tend to reassure people that they're 'normal,' but we have to take such research with a grain of salt," says Frank Sommers, who works with people who have sexual dysfunctions.

"Intercourse is not the end-all be-all. Most women don't derive full satisfaction from intercourse. The anatomical reality is, most women don't have as much sensation in the vagina as in the clitoris, which has thousands upon thousands of nerve-endings."

Sommers says pornography is to blame for many of the misconceptions we have around sexual "normalcy." "I don't think the survey is far off (from) what we already knew. But do we take the time so that our partners are aroused enough to want intercourse in the first place? That's the bigger question," says Wendy Trainor, a couples sex therapist in Toronto.Since 30 per cent of women don't have an orgasm with intercourse anyway, the focus shouldn't be placed on it, says Trainor.

"Women tend to get tense if their breasts or genitals are touched before they're aroused. A man's three-point landing -- breasts and genitals -- isn't going to go over well if she's not relaxed and receptive. Women take longer to get aroused and become receptive sexually," she says. "Porn has become the major sex educator for men. It gives us a totally misleading reality of lovemaking," says Sommers.

Penetrative sex is only one piece of the puzzle, and good sex is less a function of duration -- or stature -- than the quality of a relationship, he says.More of something good is not necessarily better. We're better off taking the time to pursue an intimate connection with our partners, in whatever way works. Whether it's three minutes or 13, that's always time well spent.