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Marriage and sexual performance
Young married females and males have higher levels of sexual performance than single females and males of the same age. However, over time, the performance levels of both groups decrease to a common low level for all older females (both married and single) and another common low level for all older males (both married and single).
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For young men, marriage makes a difference in their sexual performance: Before the age of twenty, married men have an average of 5 orgasms per week, while the unmarried have only a little more than 3. However, soon thereafter the frequency curves in both groups begin to descend: At age fifty, the weekly number of orgasms for all males is less than 2, for those in their sixties, it is slightly above 1, and for the seventy-year olds, it is below 1. These were the findings of Alfred C. Kinsey in the mid-20th century, and the exact figures may therefore be questioned for a variety of reasons. Still, even today, there can be little doubt about the tendency they illustrate. Indeed, it has since been confirmed by more recent reseach.
For women, on the other hand, Kinsey and his associates found a rather flat curve which illustrated a much lower frequency level throughout the life span. There was neither a steep initial rise nor a pronounced later decline. Just as in the male sample, marriage made a difference for young women. Once married, they had between 2 and 3 weekly orgams. Indeed, between the ages of thirty and fifty, they still had about 2 orgasms per week. On the other hand, unmarried women, throughout their lives, registered only about 1 orgasm per week or less. The same figure applied to married women over fifty.
It must be emphasized, of course, that these figures mean averages, and that there are enormous differences between individuals. Moreover, the figures only represent orgasms. They say nothing about the sources of these orgasms and, more importantly, they ignore all other sexual responses short of orgasm. Still, it is exactly this seemingly mindless reduction to the bare numbers of “countable” events that illustrates best how the female and male sexual responses develop over the years. In this sense, Kinsey’s findings remain relevant (1).
(1) Sources: Alfred C. Kinsey et al., “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male”, 1948, p. 267 and “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female” 1953, p. 549.
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