A survey found Austrians are the movers and shakers of the sex world, writes Kate Holmquist
We secretly suspected that the Austrians were having great sex, didn't we? But the best sex in the world? Apparently so, according to a study of 27,500 people aged 40-80 in 29 countries conducted by the University of Chicago. The same gung-ho, disciplined, muesli-for-breakfast attitude they show on the ski slopes has Austrian men and women singing "the hills are alive" in the bedroom as well. An impressive 71.4 per cent of Austrians aged 40-80 report fulfilling, pleasurable sex lives.
As for the Japanese - those weird baby clothes that the young women wear, the pornographic cartoons and the whole sex-hotel, male bonding over fine Scotch and geishas thing did make us wonder. The Japanese are having terrible sex. Only 18 per cent of men and 10 per cent of women are satisfied.
As for the Italians and the French? The way those peacocks strut around like God's gift hitting on female tourists would have you afraid to accept the offer for fear you'd die of pleasure? But Italians are having only middling sex, with 43 per cent of men and women finding it emotionally fulfilling and pleasurable. Yet only one-third of Italian women find sex physically satisfying, which doesn't quite add up with the finding that 90 per cent of Italian men say they're functioning brilliantly.
So where do the Irish rank? Nowhere. Despite being funded by Pfizer, manufacturer of Viagra in our very own Co Cork, the survey left us out. Our neighbours, the British, ranked 10th in the list, with 60 per cent happy with their sex lives - so let's just say that if we'd been surveyed, we'd probably have ranked ninth. Seriously, sex therapist Donal Gaynor, in Dublin, reckons we're likely to be on a level with the UK because our cultures are so similar.
The best sex is to be had in gender-equal countries and the worst in male-dominated ones. The top 10 in the survey were Austria, Spain, Canada, Belgium (go Brussels, you're not so boring after all!), the US, Australia, Mexico, Germany, Sweden and the UK. Sex lives are relatively abysmal in Thailand, China, Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan.
Edward Laumann, who led the research, explained that in Asia, "Procreation is the rationale for sex. Many women characterise sex as dirty, as a duty, something they endure" - and often stop having it after age 50.
All this is very interesting for those who prefer to lie back and think of the statistics. Are the Irish having good sex or should we emigrate? Gaynor suspects that, just as in Europe and North America, Irish baby-boomers are expecting to have fulfilling sex lives in their middle years, which is why record numbers of Irish couples are seeking psychosexual therapy in the hope of improvement.
Increased gender equality in the State has made women more demanding of satisfaction in relationships, but equality is a double-edged sword. Two-career relationships and a lack of time have made the bedroom a place to collapse, rather than the scene of joyful union, he suggests. Couples have to carve out "quality" time, and when they do, the sex too must be quality, Gaynor advises. "If you have a slice of cake and it tastes good, you want more," he explains.
More 40-plus married women are outsourcing their cake, according to Mary O'Conor, a sex therapist in Dublin, who was underwhelmed by the Chicago survey's findings. It's not news that divorced women in their 40s are having better sex. The novelty factor accounts for that, although the finding may have women in sexually so-so marriages asking: is divorce strictly necessary?
"If you want to know the answer to that, look at what your friends are doing," she suggests. But playing away "doesn't work in the long term because if the extramarital sex is good, then a relationship starts to develop and that causes problems", she says.
The best sex is to be had in long-term relationships, the survey found, which doesn't square with the fact that divorced women dating in their 40s came out on top, until you learn that the same survey found the dating divorcees were happiest if they believed their new lovers were interested in long-term commitment. So there could be a little self-deception going on there.
Younger folk may be surprised to learn that their 40-plus parents are into sex at all, but previous research has already shown that the quality of sex isn't as important to women in their 20s, when their biological imperative is finding a potentially good father to breed with. In their 30s, women are preoccupied with procreation and childcare, so it's not until their 40s that they begin to confidently express their sexuality for its own sake. At this point, women who have married "good fathers" who didn't make bells ring in the bedroom can start looking elsewhere. This pattern challenges the Irish male, too, who has difficulty resuming a sex life after a period of abstinence during marriage, O'Conor says. For men, it's a case of use it often or lose it, which brings us back to those Austrians. If you want to be a good skier, you've got to hit those slopes regularly.