A majority of respondents regard themselves as romantics. They're all for holding hands, candle light dinners, love letters, and sending flowers to their sweetheart. Thirty-two percent of those surveyed think they are skilled lovers, 32% said they were sexually adventurous, and 28% said they were sexy.
But wait. These are actually rather low numbers, one could argue. The rest of the survey indicates that there is potentially a sizeable portion of the public that is having trouble with its sex lives. Twenty percent reported being dissatisfied with their sex life, 14% reported feeling sexually frustrated, and 11% reported being not very interested in sex. In this book and its companion volumes, the issues of depression, stress, and social isolation have been aspects of many topics in a number of issues. How common are such conditions? Does a significant segment of the population have problems with sex?
A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association seems to suggest that many people do. Sociologist Edward Laumann analyzed data from the 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey. In interviews with 1,749 women and 1,410 men ages 18-59, 43% of women and 31% of men reported some degree of sexual dysfunction. Problems cited included pain during intercourse, difficulties with erections, inability to achieve orgasm and — perhaps most significantly — lack of interest in sex.
There were about 100 million men and 108 million women over the age of 18 in the United States. How does this figure apply to them? Laumann has already raised an obvious question: because of people's unwillingness to seek out help for their sexual problems, could the figures actually be higher?
Sources: "Love and Lust: A Euro RSCG Global Study." Retrieved July 22, 2002 from http://www.eurorscg.com; Laumann, Edward O.; Anthony Paik; Raymond C. Rosen. "Sexual Dysfunction in the United States: Prevalence and Predictors ." Journal of the American Medical Association, February 10, 1999, p. 537.
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