Bulgarians do it 151 times a year. Belgians do it 136 times a year. Even Hong Kongers manage it 103 times a year. If you believe the breathless surveys on rates of intercourse around the world, just about everyone's doing it all the time.
If you're not at it 127 times a year you should start worrying because, according to the Durex global sex survey, the biggest and only worldwide study of its kind, you're below average for a sexually active couple.
And if you're doing it less than 100 times a year, or around twice a week, the chances are you're a Singaporean where they only manage it 96 times a year and where 28 per cent of the sex-starved populace resort to David Beckham-style text or phone sex.
Feeling inadequate yet? Feel as if there's a global orgy going on that you haven't got an invitation for? Then take comfort, because sex expert Dr. Judith Mackay says people out there are having a lot less sex than the surveys make out.
The truth is that if you're over 40 and still having sex even once in a while, you can count yourself lucky because a lot of people your age aren't getting it at all, according to Dr. Mackay, the Hong Kong-based author of the Penguin Atlas of Human Sexual Behaviour.
Sex surveys are inaccurate for three key reasons, Dr. Mackay argued: Firstly because researchers only question people who are sexually active, secondly because interviewees tend to be in a narrow and highly-sexed age band of between 15 and 40 -- and thirdly because, as Dr. Mackay puts it, "people fib their heads off about sex."
As a result, she said, sex surveys such as those conducted by Durex, while making for good reading, can be "extremely misleading" and even "very destructive" in the effect they have on people.
"According to one of the surveys, people in France in their 80s were having sex all the time," she said. "The surveys are fundamentally flawed in all sorts of ways.
"The reality is that a lot of people don't have sex at all, or if they do have, they have it very infrequently."
Despite what the sex surveys might suggest, Dr. Mackay said more reliable data suggested that in America -- where the Durex survey found people were having sex on average 118 times a year -- a third of people were not having sex once a year.
"Forty six percent of women in the US think a good night's sleep is better than sex and 15 percent of adults are having half of the sex in the US," she said.
"People read all these statistics about sex and think they are or may be inadequate. It is very destructive. People start thinking they are not getting enough sex."
Dr. Mackay's insistence that the statistics about sex produced in surveys is wrong is based partly on her own work as a doctor at the Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong, where she would on occasions have to tell patients to avoid sex after surgery or treatments.
"I would say to them not to have sex for the next six weeks and without exception, people would be absolutely fine about it. It wasn't even an issue. Most of that was a quite genuine reaction."
Dr. Mackay said she had been to sexology conferences around the world where the argument was forcibly put forward that people's lives were not complete if they were not having regular sex.
"I disagree with that emphasis and the idea that if you are not having sex regularly it isn't good for your health as you grow old," she said. "I think it is up to people themselves. If they are settled into extreme comfort in a marriage that doesn't involve sex, so be it. It won't affect the marriage.
"Certainly my impression is that a lot of people really don't have much sex at all over the age of 40. It really does tail off and what seems to happen with marriage is that friendship and companionship kick in. The marriage is held together by family and children.
"Studies on what makes for a happy marriage put sex in the top 10 but not at the top. Friendship and having someone loyal and supportive is more important. These are the things that make marriages last."
If it is only sex that is holding a relationship together, however, Dr. Mackay said she believed that marriage would be "pretty much doomed." "People tire of it and it becomes less and less exciting," she said.
While a lack of sexual activity may not be a problem for some couples, it could become a trigger for infidelity for others, she acknowledged. Sexual desire can lie dormant and untapped but it can be resurrected "very quickly," she suggested.
"If a man takes on a younger wife or sex partner, that whole excitement can be restored," said Dr. Mackay. "That is one of the reasons people have affairs -- because they miss the excitement, the flirting and the feeling that people get when they are first attracted to someone. Some people miss it and put it aside. Some people miss it and act on it."
Commenting on the methodology of their sex surveys, a spokeswoman for Durex said the age range for the survey last year had been 16 to 45 but said the company had tried to broaden the response by conducting the survey online.
"By doing it this way, it's not just sexually active people who respond," she said. "Our survey is open to the public. We put it on our Web site. A lot of older people use the Internet now."
They're doing much more than just surfing the Internet, according to Pfizer. The pharmaceutical giant challenges Dr. Mackay's diagnosis, claiming that men aged 40 to 59 have sex an average of up to six times a month and men in their 60s have sex at least once a month.
But then the makers of the impotence drug Viagra would say that, wouldn't they?
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