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New Yorkers are known for being a frisky bunch. We love to play with each other’s bodies till kingdom cum...er, come. In our City Life Index 2018, we asked more than 15,000 of our readers in cities across the world to dish on their sexual experiences, and the results gave us some rock-hard data that paints a pretty clear picture of how and how often urban dwellers get off.
Surprisingly, our survey shows that New Yorkers aren’t necessarily having more sex than residents of other American cities. Sixty-nine percent of respondents said they had sex in the previous month, just below the national average of 70 percent. We found that the average New Yorker has sex 27.6 times per year, which is a tad more than the national average of 27 and behind cities like Chicago and Miami. But while we might not be having the most sex in the country, we're certainly doing it in our own unique way. We have the second-most one-night stands among city dwellers in the country (64 percent of us have done it), just behind Chicago at 65 percent.
The average rate of sex in Gotham might have something to do with the notion that New Yorkers don’t take serious relationships all too seriously. Nearly one-third of the respondents in our survey said that they had cheated on a partner, and 46 percent said that they had broken off a romance without saying goodbye (read: ghosted). New Yorkers also tend to be unsatisfied with just one lover—48 percent of our respondents said that they had dated several people at the same time.
While sex can be easy to find, love in general can be tough for many New Yorkers. Just 18 percent of our respondents said that it is “really easy” or “fairly easy” to find love in the city, compared to 83 percent of respondents who said the same about bumping uglies. That’s not to say that New Yorkers aren’t trying to find love. The average local respondent to our index went on 19.9 dates in NYC and used dating apps 11.9 times in the previous year, both of which are slightly above the national average.
By the time we finished combing through all of our respondents’ data, one thing became clear: New Yorkers are kind of terrible to each other. We cheat relentlessly, never text each other back and often rely on one-night stands to get off. New York is a city that is designed to lack commitment. Residents here can get a single slice of pizza, a single loose cigarette, a single-month sublet and a single-night lover all without batting an eye.
Our data shows that New Yorkers like the idea of finding love and go on dates regularly in search of relationships. But at the end of the day, we often choose to cheat, ghost or break things off rather than commit to one.
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