A doctor has given their verdict on how much sex is 'normal' for a couple to be having, and they're not the only one to have spoken about the topic.
The number of medical professionals who've been asked to say something on the subject indicates it's a topic a lot of people want to know about.
Worries about whether or not your relationship is measuring up to everyone else's can drive you doolally, so when Dr. Rena Malik appeared on the Diary of a CEO podcast, she was asked by host Steven Bartlett about the 'big myth' many people believe - which is that other couples are 'having significantly more sex'.
"I think that is a bit myth," she said. "People want to know what's normal, how much sex I should be having."
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So, according to the doctor, how often should you get busy between the sheets?
"What I really like to say is it's not the quantity of sex that matters, it's the quality of sex," she explained.
"If you're having good sex once a month that may be sufficient for you rather than having mediocre of bad sex four times a month, or 10 times a month even."
The doctor said that when it came to the 'normal' amount of sex to be having, there was 'no ideal number'.
She explained that her studies had led her to conclude the average couple was having sex about once a week, but it was 'so variable person to person' that trying to pin down a normal numerical value wasn't going to help.
"Ultimately there's no right number, it's really what's right for you and I think focusing on some benchmark of sex is actually harmful because now you're like 'I need to have sex this many times'."
How often is the average couple in the UK having sex?
The biggest sexual health study in the UK found that couples in long-term relationships were having sex about once a week.
However, sex expert Mariàn Martínez told Women's Health that less frequent good sex was better than more frequent bad sex.
She added that the longer you stayed with a partner and the older you got, the less sex you tended to have because hormones that fuel your sex drive lower with time and there are many other factors such as stress or children which can get in the way of having sex.
Beyond the idea that there is no 'normal' number when it comes to how much sex to have, Soazig Clifton told the BBC in 2022 that the amount of sex people were having around the world was coming down.
She suggested this might be due to fewer people living with their partner, but even the frequency of sex among cohabiting couples had fallen in recent years.
Clifton said one of the common trends observed was people thinking they had no time for sex as they felt they 'had so much else going on in their life' they couldn't fit it in the schedule or were too tired.
She added that one of the biggest other drivers of concern was people getting the wrong idea about how much sex was normal or what they should be expecting from their bedroom antics because misrepresentations in the media and entertainment were altering their perceptions of what they ought to be doing.
Topics: Health, Sex and Relationships
Joe Harker