I recently had a male friend lament to me about his shortcomings during his numerous throes of passion. In his defence, masturbation bore the brunt of the blame. His road to self-pleasure had allegedly led to the deterioration of his thrust time. And while this sounds like a logical alibi, sadly, it isn’t the cause. Alfred Kinsey’s famous finding is that the average man orgasms within two minutes of beginning sexual intercourse. It is easy to point fingers at several things as the blame for not lasting a hundred hours in bed—I’ve done it more times than I can remember. But one situation made me discover that vaginal penetration is not a boxing match between you and whoever you are humping and bumping.

I had picked up the hotel key from the reception and told her to dilly-dally in the lounge area before coming up to erode suspicion. In the room, I lit up the lavender-scented candles, booted up my Bluetooth speaker and my Pillow Talk playlist was on shuffle. A plastic bag of chocolates, grapes, and other snacks sat on the dresser, while a slender-necked bottle of wine and other drinks chilled in the hotel’s dwarf refrigerator. In no time, the ambiance of the room was cold and filled with the soft smell of lavender.

The scene was set and all that was left was to guzzle down a brief bottle of Jekanmo, (a sexual enhancement herbal concoction) I had bought from the Kparaga merchant on my street. I had to take it a few minutes before the freaky happened so it would have enough time to kick in, and as you guessed, it tasted awful but it was nothing a few Mentos couldn’t solve. She couldn’t hide how impressed she was by my quaint romantic set-up and she let out a cute “Aww” to commend me for my efforts. Fast-forward, I had gone down on her and from her twitching, she had enjoyed it. She rejected to return the favour so it was straight to vaginal sex. Ten minutes in and my sexual gears were still going at full steam. Soon enough, she started asking if I had climaxed and the response was the same, “um umm.” In my defence, she had previously claimed that she loved sex so I was surprised when she said she was tired and her lady bits had lost its natural lubrication. At the end of the day, I finished myself off in the hotel sink. Moral of the story: Do your best and leave the rest to…God, I guess.

There’s no globally established number but a journal columnated the responses of several therapists when they were asked how long good sex ought to last. Based on their guidelines, sex is evaluated into four types: adequate, too short, too long, and desirable. They deemed penetrative vaginal sex lasting one to two minutes to be “too short”, and sex lasting 10 to 30 minutes to be “too long.” Meanwhile, adequate and desirable sex lasted three to seven minutes, respectively. By these standards, I feel bad for people who have porn-graded expectations for sex. Relax, sex should last for thirty minutes.

These guidelines differ depending on who you’re with and their tolerance for sex. Also, considering the variations of sex and foreplay, the lines become blurred because of all things said and done, the big O is usually the endgame for both regardless of how it is attained. The reason why so much expectation is placed on vaginal sex is that we’ve been made to believe that both parties are meant to climax together, and fall side by side panting. I, on the other hand, believe sex should be liberal and I can not over-emphasise the need to not be a one-trick pony enough. Educating oneself on the different techniques of pleasuring your partner doesn’t make you—for the lack of a better word— an ashewo. Because when you can’t be as effective in one, two or three can act as a sufficient substitute.

While we’re all aware of short-changing our down-and-dirty time, real sex does not take that much time, even for people who are extremely satisfied with their sexual relationships. There is a time and place for quickies as well as a longer, more intimate approach. The length and intimacy of sex vary from relationship to relationship, so there is no “normal.”

From my experience women want sex to be shorter than most men think for several reasons like; vaginal dryness, sustainability of sexual position, and fatigue. Most intense and pleasurable intercourse happens within 5.4 minutes so tone down the maths equations you solve in your head. It’s sex, not the LSATs. My advice is to communicate with your partner and set your own standards because, at the end of the day, no one is similar and talking can help bridge that chasm between pleasure and duration.

Tilewa Kazeem
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