How Men and Women Rate Marriage and Sex

Recently we asked men and women to rate their marriages and sex lives. The results were interesting and mirrored better-done studies about such things.

On the high end, nearly as many men and women rated their marriage a 9 or 10. But on the low end, three times as many women as men rated their marriage as 4 or less. No men rated their marriage as a 1, and no men thought their wife would rate their marriage as a 1, but 3% of women said their marriage was a 1.

On the sex side, women were happier than men. Twenty-five percent of women, but only 11% of men rated their sex life a 9 or 10. The exception to this was early marriage. Men married less than three years gave an average rating a bit over nine, while women married less than three years had an average of 5.5. Male happiness with sex dropped to just over 5 from the 3rd to 14th year. Women’s ratings started to rise between 15 and 19 years, surpassing male happiness. Men started to give higher ratings between 20 and 24 years. Both men and women gave better and better ratings for sex from then on, with women running ahead of men. Women overestimate male sexual happiness; while 79% percent of women said their husband would rate his sex life 6 or better, only 56% of men gave such a rating.

The good news from the survey was that most people say their marriage has gotten better in the last year. Twenty-one percent of women and 14% of men said their marriages have gotten worse, but 58% of women and 53% of men say it’s gotten better.

The bottom lines:

• Odds are you overestimate your wife’s marital happiness.
• Odds are she overestimates your sexual happiness.
• If you’ve been married less than three years, you’re probably enjoying sex significantly more than your wife.