Catherine Straut

Newser staff

(NEWSER) – It's not exactly the most romantic statistic: Almost half of all men finish sex within two minutes, reports the New Republic by way of Dr. Harry Fisch's new book, The New Naked: The Ultimate Sex Education for Grown-Ups.

In an excerpt published on Nerve, Fisch notes that his patients are typically fixed on what the normal frequency of sex should be, but that quality — and therefore duration — should be of equal concern. He trots out statistics from previous sex studies to that end: that the length of the average sex act is 7.3 minutes, but an "astonishing" 43% of such acts are completed within 2 minutes.

This isn't exactly breaking news. Alfred Kinsey determined decades ago that the majority of men ejaculated in 2 minutes or less. (Interestingly enough, a sex therapist recently defined intercourse lasting fewer than 2 minutes as premature ejaculation to the Daily Mail.)

But the New Republic points out that men, not women, are probably more likely to be most bothered by the figure. A 2004 study found that men reported a significantly longer ideal duration of intercourse than did women; both sexes had similar ideas about the ideal foreplay length.

So what's a guy to do, other than get over it? A Swedish study offers one interesting course of action: Researchers had men who couldn't make it more than a minute complete 12 weeks of pelvic floor exercises; their average ejaculation time rose nearly five-fold, from 31.7 seconds to 146.2 seconds, reports UPI.

Newser is a USA TODAY content partner providing general news, commentary and coverage from around the Web. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.