Crap sex: you know you've had it

Surveys that ask people how much sex they're having are just asking people to tell big fat fibs. Who is actually going to reply, "Well I'm not getting any right now." No, the default in this situation is to pluck what you think is a respectable number for your particular status out of the air.

If you're young and single your answer will be along the lines of, "Oh at least four times a day." If you've been in a relationship for a year you'll say "Oh, five times a week." You might add that on Sundays you spend most of the day with your loving, sexually accomplished partner languidly spread out on 600 thread count sheets, making passionate love between pillow fights and reading the Sunday papers to each other, before eating ice-cream out of tubs. If you're married you’ll probably opt for the respectable response of, "Three times a week" with the proviso that "it's as good as it's always been". So where are these people? Ms R has not met any of them and neither has anyone she knows.

The collective weight of all this truth-bending makes it very hard for anyone to admit that they are not having sex, let alone the kind of tense, delicious, wild, sweet and filthy sex that reduces you to tiny grains of sand and puts an exquisite tint on life. But who are these people who are regularly being pulled into alleyways in the rain, and being ravished in scenes worthy of a French film?

Admittedly, Ms R has enjoyed her fair share of such situations, but these are exceptions rather than the rule. The truth, as many of us know, is that a lot of the time sex is desperately average. While Ms R can happily say that her recent experiences have been just the opposite, she has not forgotten all those episodes of rubbish sex where she lay there thinking:

"Oh when the fuck are you going to finish. There is no way on earth I will have an orgasm with you in this millennium, so could you just stop since you are so off the mark here and we are going nowhere slowly. In fact I would gladly have root canal treatment minus the anaesthetic or cut off my arm rather than spend another moment with you choo chooing into me like a fucking Noddy train."

As Ms R got older she became more proficient at dealing with Bad Sex Choices. If she'd been stupid enough to bring him home, she'd call a taxi as soon as the deed was done, having first used her experience to hurry him up while telling him how wonderful it all was. (I know it's crap isn't it. But blokes do similar things, don't they?) Almost immediately she would point out that since he was awake he should go, and leave her to get on with a Very Busy Sunday. We do not need to be reminded of our mistakes.

Sensational and satisfying sex is that rare meeting of mind and body that invites you to abandon yourself without a second thought. It happens relatively few times in your life - in Ms R's case usually, but not always, with people whom she has some greater rapport with. And while average sex won't necessarily detract from a relationship, great sex can add so much to it.

It can introduce a level of openness into other areas of your life that can strengthen your relationship. It gives you an amazing sense of being at the top of life itself. It turbo-charges your senses and creates such an adrenalin rush, you wish it could happen every day. But that's the thing: except for those mysterious people answering sex surveys, it won't. And that's what makes it so delicious, so desirable and so worth having.