RELAX, GUYS, EVERYONE’S NOT HAVING MORE SEX THAN YOU… Are you a charming young buck with huge biceps and an arsenal of witty pick-up lines, who just can’t seem to seal the deal no matter how many times you ask a hot babe at the bar if that run in her stocking is a “stairway to Heaven”? Do you tend to crash and burn night after night? Do you have all your limbs, most of your hair, a face that quite possibly someone besides a mother could love, yet no dates? Well, if you think you’re alone in going home alone every night, then chances are your mates aren’t being completely honest with you. It seems that young blokes who claim to be all-conquering sexual barbarians, who plunder fresh female territory and sup from a different furry chalice night after night, are few and far between. Well, at least that’s what sex expert and University of New South Wales researcher Rachel Hills reckons.
Hills has been hitting up Australian Gen Ys (that’s us supposedly shiftless layabouts aged 18 to 29) for their views on sex and relationships. She says her research has uncovered a massive gap between what we think other people are getting up to between the sheets (i.e. what they brag about down at the pub after a few too many schooeys) and what actually goes on behind closed doors.
“There are a whole bunch of misconceptions about what’s normal and what’s not, sexually speaking,” says Rachel, and she’s not just talking about your mate’s penchant for the ‘Dirty Sanchez’. “Looking at much of the media, you’d think everyone picked up every Friday night, and did it all over again on Saturday if they weren’t too tired. But if you look at the facts of people’s behaviour there’s a lot more variety than that.”
“The people I’ve spoken to have spanned the gamut from virgins, to people in long-term relationships, to people who only have casual sex, to people who did have a lot of casual sex at one point, but haven’t had sex at all for a while - even, in some cases, for years.”
So if your ever-increasing acquaintance with Mrs. Palmer and her five daughters has you feeling like some sort of sexually inadequate Quasimodo, you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. Hills says this gap between how much sex people think they should be having and how much they’re actually getting can leave them feeling anxious and abnormal. But it shouldn’t.
“For men there’s an expectation that not only should they be able to get any woman they want, but that they should be up for it all the time. And it works both ways. Women are programmed through society and the media to think that there’s something wrong if a man doesn’t want to have sex with them.”
What do you reckon?Have your mates been telling you sexual conquest porky pies or has Rachel just been speaking to the wrong people (i.e. chess-club members and computer nerds)?
Comment below, or fill out her
survey here and set her study straight.
After reading this, we doubt any of the blokes in this pic will get some love-tunnel action.
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