There
are some things guys just can’t get enough of—quoting old movies, for example,
or football. Then there are other things that they can most definitely do
without, like the most popular song of the summer that’s played over and over
and won’t go away.
When it comes to sex, however, a lot of guys like to think their
horizons are unlimited. You
can never have too
much sex, Mr. Champion Sex-Haver will say, giving you a lecherous wink
while Walk The Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance” plays somewhere off in the distance.
But are guys really telling the truth about the amount of sex they
can handle (or even how much they want to have)? “You can’t handle the truth,”
Jack Nicholson’s character inA Few Good Men would say—movie quote!—but we think
you can handle the truth.
“This needs to be answered like all the other ‘too much of a good
thing’ questions,” says Ursula
Ofman, Psy.D., a clinical psychologist and sex therapist in private practice in
New York City. “If sex begins to take over your day and your thoughts, starts
interfering with your relationships, work and family life, then you have
reached the area of ‘too much.’”
Some facts: 18-29 year olds have sex 112 times per year, on
average, according to TheKinsey Institute. It's 86 times per year for
30-39 year olds, and 69 times per year for those ages 40-49. So if you’re
having more than the average amount of sex per year for your age, are you
having too much sex? Or are you just doing what people do?
“Frankly, asking how much
sex is too much sex is a little bit like asking how many drinks makes a person
an alcoholic,” says Robert Weiss,
LCSW, CSAT-S, a senior vice president of clinical development at Elements
Behavioral Health and the author of Always Turned On: Sex Addiction in the
Digital Age. “This
approach fails to recognize that with booze, it's not a matter of how much you
drink, it's a question of how it affects your life. If alcohol is consistently
creating problems for you, then you might want to look at your drinking. Sex is
the same way.”
Medically speaking, “there’s no such thing as too much sex,” says Lauren F. Streicher, M.D., says
associate clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Feinberg
School of Medicine at Northwestern University and the author of Sex Rx: Hormones, Health and Your
Best Sex Ever. “Obviously, listen to your body. If you’re sore
or tired, then don’t have sex.”
We can’t overstate that last piece of advice. Couples in
long-distance relationships often overdo it sexually when they’re finally
reunited, especially if they know their time together is limited, says Jonthan D.
Schiff, M.D., assistant clinical professor of urology at the Icahn
School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
“When people ejaculate eight to ten times over the weekend from
Friday to Sunday, it’s going to cause some pain and discomfort when you go to
that extreme amount,” Dr. Schiff says. The key in this scenario, he says, is
that the amount of sex being had by the couple is so much more than either
person usually has week-in and week-out. “It’s like anything else. If you’re
doing an activity steadily, your body will be able to tolerate it when you push
it more.”
Schiff
also says that an extremely high frequency of sexual intercourse may damage the skin of the penis and vagina, which can
lead to disease transmissions through open cuts or wounds and increase your
chances of certain illnesses.
As long as people do it safely, having a lot of pyschologically and physically
healthy sex can be a
wonderful thing, says Stephen Snyder, M.D., a sex therapist based in
New York City—“that is, if it's taking you someplace special and making you
feel good about yourself,” Dr. Snyder says. “But if it's not doing anything
special for you, and not making you feel good about yourself, then it's not
likely to have much of a positive impact on your life, and may have a negative
impact. Again, it's the quality, not the quantity, that's important."
Or as Weiss says: “If the amount of sex you're having works for
you, and is not causing you (or anyone else) any problems or distress, then
your sexual frequency is just fine—and don't let anyone tell you differently.”
Source: MEN'SFITNESS
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