Analysis / Everybody Has Lots of Sex

Outside of a few niche subcultures, such as Polyamory or certain parts of the gay male scene (especially Men Who Have Sex With Men), this trope is rather far from Truth in Television. For most western people, their lifetime "body count" remains in the single figures. Another way in which this trope diverges from reality is that, in the real world, people in long-term monogamous relationships (including married people) have far more sex overall than single people whose sexual opportunities are limited to short-term relationships or hookups. The prevalence of Everyone Has Lots of Sex in fiction on the one hand, compared with Awful Wedded Life and Sexless Marriage on the other, leads to a common misconception in the real world that single people (with their limitless access to sexual variety) have more sex than married people (who supposedly get bored of having sex with the same person for years on end), but this is very far from the truth. The prevalence of these tropes may partially be a consequence of Most Writers Are Male, since in the real world men on average have a greater preference for sexual variety over commitment to a single partner when compared to women.

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