Hey Dr Sue — How Many Times Do Young Women Usually Need Sex In A Week?

Have sex or need sex? Because those are two different things.

Since you said young women and not girls, I’m going to focus on women 18 — mid 20’s, and I’m going to start by talking about how often they have sex.

I have to tell you I’m really hesitant to actually list a number for two reasons. The first is that we don’t have a lot of data on this. Studies are limited in that they may only look at how often you used a condom or other contraceptive. Or they look at sexual activity in the last month, not the last week.

The limited data I’ve collected over the years indicates that for those women who are sexually active, about 45–50% had sex in the last week, but I can’t say how many times they had sex in the last week.

How often someone has sex is based on a lot of things, things you might not always think of. All the things that happen in a person’s life outside the bedroom can impact frequency of sex, including stress, age, and illness.

And relationship status. In general, people in a relationship have sex more frequently than single people.

The second reason I’m hesitant to list the number of times young women have sex in a week is because I fear that it will set people up to feel like there’s…