More than just a birthday thing, right?

February 14, 2013 3:29 PM

I have a question about the average frequency of a particular sexual act... NSFW to be sure.

It is Valentine's day and my fiance and I have sex on the brain. Please help us settle an argument.

I am guessing this is probably pretty hard to know for sure, but what is the average number of blow jobs a man receives in the run of a year? (For the sake of argument, lets presume a heterosexual M-F relationship.) Once a week? Once a month? My fiance figures that the average man gets like two a year, if that. That seems insanely infrequent and I'm assuming he is basing that off of a less than average past partner. I mean, yeah, I get it, it isn't every person's favourite act to perform, but it isn't really a once or twice a year thing, is it? I would have guessed like one a month.

posted by PuppetMcSockerson to human relations (32 answers total)

You have to define blowjob. Is it a blowjob when the penis enters the mouth? Or is it a blowjob upon completion?

I think a blowjob as part of foreplay is vastly more common than a blowjob to finish.
posted by no regrets, coyote at 3:33 PM on February 14 [13 favorites]

Totally varies. Within the same relationship over the course of over a decade it's been daily and monthly, waxes and wanes with whatever we're both feeling at the moment. Like most sex statistics, I suspect you'll never really get good numbers on this.
posted by straw at 3:34 PM on February 14

Blowjob to completion.
posted by PuppetMcSockerson at 3:37 PM on February 14

A friend of mine says that his wife would give him blowjobs quite frequently when she was his girlfriend. Once they were married, he says he's gotten exactly ZERO. I believe him because of his attitude and demeanor when speaking about this issue. I would guess it varies widely, of course, but I bet your fiance isn't far off in many, if not most, cases, at least among the guys I've spoken with.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 3:38 PM on February 14

Huh. I am a woman, been married for nearly a decade and my estimate was going to be wildly more frequent than the above. Like maybe, twice a week?
posted by gaspode at 3:40 PM on February 14 [6 favorites]

Which just goes to show that estimates like this are totally meaningless.
posted by gaspode at 3:40 PM on February 14 [5 favorites]

It depends on the couple. My bf gets a BJ every time we see each other because I love (I'm talking would marry it if I could) giving them. He's probably had like 15 over the past few months.
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 3:51 PM on February 14 [3 favorites]

The Kinsey Report should help you here, surely, although these things were maybe different in the 1940s.
posted by lollusc at 3:52 PM on February 14

Some men don't get off on blowjobs alone. They just don't. So with that definition, some men have never had a blowjob, even if their partners go down on them during foreplay as often as they'd like.
posted by aabbbiee at 3:54 PM on February 14 [6 favorites]

I think it's your definition. I go down on my fella far more frequently than that, but because we have lots of sex, it usually winds up finishing as sex, by his preference. If he preferred to completion, it'd happen very frequently, but he doesn't, so it doesn't. But to-completion is not a "Special occasion" thing either, because as noted, not the preference.
posted by corb at 4:26 PM on February 14 [7 favorites]

For both BJ as foreplay and to completion, the participation rate is widely variable from couple to couple. I don't know if an average is at all meaningful, even with a large sample.
posted by megatherium at 4:38 PM on February 14

It's hard to find statistics on this - most surveys I have access to ask either have you done this act in the past year, or what the last sexual act you performed included. I think the unreliability of memory would make a question like, "How often do you give/get blowjobs" problematic, because the rate probably changes over time and because we're bad at estimating that sort of thing.
posted by muddgirl at 4:43 PM on February 14

Yeah, definitely varies by couple. I once had a boyfriend who didn't really like oral sex, so even though we had sex almost every day (and even though I like giving oral sex), it basically happened never. With others, it's been pretty often...a couple of times a week, or at least a couple of times a month. It's never been a birthday thing, but again, that's probably a lot to do with the fact that I enjoy it so much.
posted by three_red_balloons at 4:43 PM on February 14

There are more updated sex surveys than Kinsey -- like Laumann -- but they usually don't measure frequency or specifically define the act as x, just participation.

Considering that I don't really talk to my friends about my sex life beyond HAVINGIT/WISHIWASHAVINGIT, I would have no idea of the "average."
posted by sm1tten at 5:04 PM on February 14

Mrs. Plowhand and I have been very happily married for almost 20 years, and dated for 18 months prior to that, so this is a lot of data from a single monogamous relationship; make of that what you will. Mine is the wordiest answer so far, so apologies if the following is over-sharing. Also, my sockpuppet account name is a poor choice for answering this question, but what's a guy to do?

Blowjobs-as-foreplay are a completely standard part of our repertoire, as is cunnilingus. So for BJ-as-foreplay, three times per week is common, and this has pretty much been our standard frequency for the entirety of our marriage, with a few hiatuses due to pregnancy and childbirth. But Mrs. Plowhand really enjoys PIV sex, and giving me BJs makes her horny, so unless she's on her period BJs tend to be foreplay rather than an act in total. This is not something I am going to complain about.

When she's on her period, she's GGG and will gladly attempt a BJ to completion, but I guess I'm a tough nut to crack, so to speak, so her/our BJ-to-completion rate average is low, like maybe once every other month. Not for lack of trying or enthusiasm on her part (or mine), just something that doesn't always happen. But this often results in other fun activities, so again, no real complaints here; it's all good.
posted by plowhand at 5:14 PM on February 14 [1 favorite]

The information on the Kinsey Institute page here has some related info, like "Half or more of women ages 18 to 39 reported giving or receiving oral sex in the past 90 days", and a chart that includes the percentage of women who have given oral sex to a man in the past year, broken down by age group (a little more than halfway down the page). They cite this study, but the link to download their report isn't working for me.
posted by songs about trains at 5:17 PM on February 14

I was really hoping there would be some sort of study or investigation in to the subject. I didn't expect a concrete perfectly measured average. But a rough estimate would be nice.

A rough estimate of what, exactly?

The reason that this question bristles is that it's asking for generalizations. A "rough estimate" of human sexual behavior is a stereotype. Which, in this case, is a tired sitcom trope about wives not putting out. I'm sure you didn't intend for this, but the framing of your question - a blow job is a birthday gift, it's not everyone's favorite (i.e., it's unpleasant) - plays into a sexist cultural narrative.
posted by ablazingsaddle at 5:41 PM on February 14 [13 favorites]

Seems like researchers consider oral sex to be any mouth-genital contact, so no info on completion, but you may be interested in this report from the CDC, "Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures: Men and Women, 15-44 Years of Age, United States" (warning, PDF). It includes stats about what percentage of people do what and how often.
posted by purpleclover at 6:24 PM on February 14

twice a week here......
posted by Country Dick Montana at 6:48 PM on February 14

My (now-ex) husband's brother used to look forward to his birthday every year because that was the only time he could get a blowjob from his wife. But one year he was grumbling to my husband that he'd had a lousy birthday... "didn't even get a blowjob!" My husband replied, "Really? I got one this morning!" which only added to his brother's foul mood.

From that day on, I made sure to give my husband a blowjob on his brother's birthday every year. I would start off by singing "Happy Birthday to Mike...."

Just to add my two cent's worth to your pile of anecdata, I give oral as foreplay just about every time we have sex. "Completion" probably happens every second or third time. I'd do it pretty much as often as he wanted, within reason.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 7:16 PM on February 14 [8 favorites]

I'm lucky if I get sex more than once a month, and I still get at least five or six BJs a year.
posted by Null Pointer and the Exceptions at 8:51 PM on February 14

I probably perform oral sex on my partner about once a month.
posted by SkylitDrawl at 8:53 PM on February 14

This is definitely one of those cases where the "average" won't have much bearing on most individual couples. Mostly because some guys are just a lot more work than others. If you can complete a BJ in less than five minutes with your partner, you're going to do it way more frequently than you would if your partner needs more like twenty minutes, or has trouble ever orgasming that way at all. If performing oral sex means you're committing to some serious jaw and neck pain, then it's going to be a "special occasion" sort of thing. Whereas I've had friends who gave a BJ to their boyfriends nearly every night, because it was so much quicker and simpler than having sex when they were tired and didn't feel like going through the whole rigamarole.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 10:26 PM on February 14 [8 favorites]

Rarely to completion, because, well, we both get into it enough that we end up having sex mostly. But to actual completion? Once every couple of months - for us that would straddle a very rare day where I feel sexual enough to want to go down on him but for some reason do not want to have sex (sex being his preference pretty much every time - I've never known him to turn it down for a blowjob).
posted by geek anachronism at 10:57 PM on February 14

I've observed about the same spectrum of behavior as Narrative Priorities lays out. And as s/he implies in the last sentence there, some of it has to do with the desire for PIV sex as well - if he tends to lose interest in sexual activity as soon as he gets his, which is not uncommon, then you'll have a case where a hornier woman will refuse to give a blowjob because she wants her equal share, and a case where a less-interested woman will preferentially give blowjobs because it's simpler.
posted by Lady Li at 11:17 PM on February 14 [1 favorite]

For me, it's always depended on my partner's preference and desire to do it (so with some relationships it happened never and in others, quite a lot), but being particularly long-lasting and interested also in other activities, I rarely get it to completion.
posted by kalessin at 11:54 PM on February 14

the framing of your question - a blow job is a birthday gift, it's not everyone's favorite (i.e., it's unpleasant) - plays into a sexist cultural narrative.

For what it is worth, I used those statements (birthday and not everyone's favourite) because those were things my fiance described during our conversation about blowjobs. His past partners apparently didn't enjoy doing them, and that the only time he had a chance of getting one was his birthday (and even then it had to be negotiated). I actually agree with you that the whole "wives don't put out" and "BJs stop once you're married" is ridiculous and frankly was a big part of why I asked the question. My fiance gets BJs to completion on average twice a week (pretty much daily during my period). I do it because I really enjoy giving them and lord knows he enjoys recieving them and I get a bit irritated with the whole "once you're married BJs stop" thing. I have heard it many times before, and it is something my fiance experienced first hand, but it sounded nuts to me. I asked this question to try to assess whether no-more-once-married that was as common place as we're lead to believe, and mostly to try to determine if our frequency was as unusually high as my fiance seems to think. I hoped that since there is lots online relating to couples' average frequency for sex that there would be data on this as well somewhere.



Anyway, purpleclover's response is the closest to the type of information we were looking for so I marked it as best answer. It wasn't as specific as I was hoping, but it appears the frequency of BJ ending in orgasm just isn't something people have researched, which surprises me. I also marked the Kinsey Institute information as best, but I question whether it is terribly relevent now since it seems people's attitudes towards BJs have changed, even in the past couple decades.

I definitely appreciate the anecdotal information too. Interesting to see how varying this is.
posted by PuppetMcSockerson at 4:20 AM on February 15

[Absolutely to not turn this into an argument about blowjobs, ffs people.]
posted by jessamyn at 5:54 AM on February 15 [2 favorites]

We frequently do it as part of foreplay before PIV sex, but my partner has a hard time coming that way, so that's probably only happened twice or so in the 4 1/2 years we've been together.
posted by WorkingMyWayHome at 10:24 AM on February 15

My boyfriend and I do some form of going down on each other probably every time we have sex, but just as foreplay. Oral sex to completion only happens for either of us if sex really just isn't working out. But we both like giving oral sex, we just like PIV more.
posted by stoneandstar at 10:31 AM on February 15

Keep in mind that marriage also correlates with a longer relationship and older age. On average sexual appetites change over time, with some decrease in frequency. If people have sex (in general) less when they've been married 10 years than when they were first together a year, it's not that marriage magically made that happen.
posted by bizzyb at 1:48 PM on February 15

Depends entirely on partner and preferences. Some cases never, some just as an occasional favor, some cases years and years of frequent, enthusiastic enjoyment by both.

Pretty much as with any sex act.
posted by ead at 3:20 PM on February 15