Relationships5 min(s) read
Published 15:51 11 Aug 2026 GMT
Ask your closest friend how often they have sex and watch them hesitate.
They will tell you about their in-laws, their Hinge disasters, the rash they accidentally sent to their boss.
But this one makes people go quiet.
Half of adults responding to one UK-based study still considered sex a taboo subject, and the reason it stays that way is that everyone has a number in their head that they think they should be hitting, and almost nobody believes they are hitting it.
Here is what it actually looks like when 100 women tell the truth.
According to the UK's National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, people aged 16 to 44 have sex three times a month on average.
That probably sounds low, but here is the gap between perception and reality: a 2023 Hims and Hers report found that 81% of people assume others are having sex at least once a week.
Only 45% actually are. And while 98% assumed everyone else had sex last month, 21% hadn't.
Everyone thinks everyone else is at it. Almost nobody is right.
They exist, but there are fewer of them than you think.
One woman, 36, five months into a relationship, said she has sex twice a day whenever she sees her partner.
Six orgasms for her, two for him, on the stairs and then in the bedroom.
Another, 30, has sex every day and summed up her preference for mornings with four words: 'IBS girlies know.'
A 39-year-old married woman said she and her husband have sex most days and both orgasm about 90% of the time.
Their last time was yesterday, in the front room - no fanfare. Just part of their life.
These women are the minority. They know it too.
This is where most people actually land.
A 36-year-old, married nine months, described having sex on a work-from-home lunchbreak.
Twenty minutes. Both orgasmed. Then back to their desks in separate rooms.
A 38-year-old, married eight years, said they do it twice a week at the same time on the same days while their baby naps - both orgasm.
Then they get dressed fast, make a cup of tea, and sit on the sofa until the baby wakes up.
One woman, 30, in a four-year relationship, said they manage once a month because they work opposite schedules and only get one evening together a week.
The pressure on that single night is so intense they usually avoid it altogether.
'If I were to initiate, I'd be getting rejected every night,' she said.
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This is where the survey got properly raw.
A 37-year-old married mother said she and her husband have had sex once since their toddler was born. They tried. It was awkward. Neither of them knows how to start anymore.
A 46-year-old, married eight years, said the last time they had sex was conceiving their second child. In 2017.
A 48-year-old, married 18 years, said she has not had an orgasm in 19 years. Her husband finishes, lies down, and goes to sleep. Every time.
A 34-year-old in a 14-year relationship put it bluntly.
She works, looks after the kids, does the housework, and deals with family issues.
By the evening, the last thing she wants is to perform for someone else when she feels 'incredibly unsexy and tired'.
A 55-year-old, married 32 years, couldn't remember the last time. Definitely more than 18 months ago. It hurt because of menopausal dryness.
A 34-year-old single woman hasn't had sex in six years.
She took a vow of celibacy after what she called 'a few wild years'.
She misses it but says it has been so long she wouldn't know what to do anymore. She will never tell anyone how long it has actually been.
A 29-year-old said simply: 'I've never had sex.'
A 36-year-old hasn't had sex in 10 years. 'Drunken fun' was the entire description.
A 32-year-old has solo sex four times a week. Partnered sex, not since Christmas. He orgasmed. She didn't.
It runs through the whole thing like a thread you can't unsee once you notice it.
Woman after woman describing sex where their partner finishes and they don't.
Some fake it, some have given up faking it, some never started.
Clinical psychologist Dr Karen Gurney says the orgasm gap is not biological.
It is about how men and women have sex with each other.
'We don't see this orgasm gap when women have sex with other women,' she told Stylist, the outlet that conducted the survey.
A 27-year-old, married one year, described sex lasting three thrusts before her husband finished and started apologising.
She reassured him because she didn't want to break his confidence, but she said her own self-esteem has plummeted because of it.
A 54-year-old, married 32 years, said she has never climaxed with her husband. When menopause killed her libido, she stopped pretending. That was that.
A 30-year-old took the opposite view. She doesn't always orgasm with her boyfriend but has decided she is fine with that. 'I've stopped putting pressure on myself,' she said.
Because shame fills the silence.
When nobody shares, everyone assumes they are the only one struggling.
Sex educator Ruby Rare's suggestion was simple: get a group of women in a room and actually talk about it. The amount, the kind, how it feels.
'The only way we get out of our own heads and let go of spiralling self-judgment is by talking to each other.'
A hundred women just did.
The answers were messy, funny, sad, awkward, sometimes hot, often painful, and completely all over the place.
Which is probably the most useful thing about them.
