Silk
App of the Day
from the creators of 
murmur
Layered
Date night
People ask this to find out whether they are normal. The honest answer is that there is data, and that it will not tell you what you want to know.
What one large survey found
The best-known figures come from the General Social Survey in the United States, analysed by Twenge, Sherman and Wells in 2017. It covers 26,620 adults between 1989 and 2014.
- Adults in their 20s had sex about 80 times a year on average.
- Adults in their 60s had sex about 20 times a year on average.
- Across all adults, the average fell by about nine times a year between the late 1990s and the early 2010s.
- Among people who were married or living together, frequency declined over that period.
What an average hides
An average is the middle of a very wide spread. A couple far above it and a couple far below it can both be content, and a couple sitting exactly on it can both be unhappy.
The survey is also about adults in one country, across decades. It says nothing about what is right for two particular people this year.
A better question
Compare yourselves with yourselves. Is this month like most months? Has something shifted since a new job, a baby or a move? Do you both feel the same about it?
Those are things you can see in your own record and say to each other. A national average cannot do either.
Closeness is wider than sex
A week with a long talk, a walk holding hands and a night in can be a close week. If you only count one thing, you will miss the weeks that were good for other reasons.
In Silk
Silk logs every kind of moment, from holding hands to a date night, and shows your own rhythm over weeks and months. It is your baseline, which is the only one that applies to you.
Updated 11 November 2026.
Questions
How often do couples have sex on average?
A US survey of more than 26,000 adults found that people in their 20s had sex about 80 times a year on average, and people in their 60s about 20 times a year. Individual couples vary widely around those figures.
Is it normal to have sex less often over time?
The same survey found that frequency falls with age, and that partnered adults were having sex less often in the early 2010s than in the late 1990s.
How do I know if we are having enough sex?
No number answers that. The useful question is whether both of you are content with how things are, and that is a conversation.