Sextistics

Full of dinner and wine and chocolates and all of the other Valentine's Day cliches that I love, Christopher and I watched another TLC documentary last night called Sextistics: Your Love Life. It was absolutely fascinating because it contained all the information that I've ever wanted to know about American love. Part of me wanted to geek out and write down all of the statistics as they appeared for discussion on my blog, but I withheld because Christopher was sitting next to me. I thought if the statistic was really important, I would remember it.

Without further ado, some cold, hard numbers about American love:

• Men and women will fall in love on average seven times in their lifetimes. This is a surprisingly large number.
• Being in love has the same brain chemical equivalent as being high on cocaine and heroin. Dopamine and all that jazz.
• Women will kiss an average of 79 "frogs" before finding their mates. I find this number oddly comforting, probably because my number is somewhere in the 40s — 60s. I have a little padding room.
• Women have sex with an average of nine men in their lifetimes. Oops.
• Men have sex with an average of 12 women in their lifetimes.
• 44% of people have had sex in a car.
• 10% of people are virgins on the wedding night.
• 25% of all couples do not consummate the wedding night, presumably to some giant number of glasses of champagne imbibed at weddings per year, something in the millions.
• There are 4,100 engagements per year in the United States. I think this number seems a little low considering our population is 330 million according to the Olympic opening ceremony statistics.
• The 51% divorce rate is true. However,
• If you get married in your forties, the divorce rate is 7%.
• Marriage in your thirties: 16%. I did all kinds of mental fist pumps to this number, because it's practically impossible for me to get married in my twenties at this point and I can totally work with 16%. Statistically, I will probably not get divorced!
• And finally, marriage in your twenties: 77% divorce rate. Suckers.
• Men have over 4,100 orgasms during their lives, while women only have roughly 1,400. I narrowed my eyes and looked at Christopher and said the huge difference in numbers is due to men not taking the time on women. Christopher didn't miss a beat and said it was due to men masturbating more.
• Couples in their twenties have sex eight times a month.
• Couples in their thirties have sex six times a month. However, if they have children, this number is reduced to four times per month.
• Good news is couples in their forties have sex six times per month, so sex will increase as the children age.
• People will kiss for two weeks of their lives. I scoffed and said I pretty much already nailed that number with this one guy from college.
• People will orgasm for 150 hours in their lifetime. Total brain melt!

So there you have it, some pretty interesting numbers. I was below most of the statistics, so I have some life to live as long as I don't sleep with anyone else for the rest of my life. And then I'll still be above average on that one.

What do you think of the statistics? Too high? Too low? Spot on?