Many would have wondered at some point in their lives, at least in private, whether the frequency of sex they are having is “normal” compared to others.

Till now, other than the sex surveys conducted by news magazines, there was very little scientific research on the sexual behaviour of Indian couples.

This is sad because we live in a land, which once believed in the scientific study of eroticism.

Sex surveys, conducted by the media, while providing a voyeuristic glimpse into the intimate lives of strangers, are often conducted by marketing executives/agencies interested in selling their product rather than understanding sex.

This is where a study conducted by trained sex researchers can possibly provide more accurate and valuable data.

But why would information about the frequency someone’s sex life matter so much that it warrants a research?

Sexual intercourse is one of the important predictors of emotional and physical well-being in a married couple. So knowing how often you do it may also indicate the overall health of a relationship.

As medical historian Edward Shorter writes “desire surges from the body, the mind interprets what society will accept and what not, and the rest of the signals are edited out by culture.”

Many researchers today agree that had it not been for the restrictive influence of culture and religion, humans, would have had sex as often and as freely as our hypersexual primate cousins, the Bonobos, with whom we share 98 percent of our genetic profile, making the endangered great ape as close to a human as a fox is to a dog.