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One hundred and fifty-two heterosexual couples reported their actual and ideal duration of foreplay and intercourse, as well as their perceptions of their partners' desired duration offoreplay and intercourse. Further, participants reported the duration offoreplay and intercourse that they felt most men and most women wanted. Ideal length of foreplay did not differ for men and women. However, men reported a significantly longer ideal duration of intercourse than did their partners. The ideal duration of foreplay and intercourse were significantly longer than the actual duration for both genders. The women, but not the men, significantly underestimated their partners' desired duration of foreplay and intercourse. Further, both genders exhibited faulty stereotypes concerning men's but not women's ideal scripts. Men were seen as desiring a significantly shorter duration of foreplay and intercourse than the ideal reported by the men in the study. Both men's and women's perceptions of their partners' ideal duration of foreplay and intercourse were found to be more strongly related to their own sexual stereotypes than to their partners' self-reported sexual desires, suggesting that people rely on sexual stereotypes when estimating their partners' ideal sexual scripts. Men's and women's ideal scripts and men's and women's sexual stereotypes concerning the opposite gender's ideal duration offoreplay were found to uniquely predict the foreplay performance script. For intercourse, men's and women's ideal scripts and men's stereotypes concerning the duration of intercourse that women want uniquely predicated the performance script. We present potential reasons for the discrepancy in individuals' performance and ideal scripts
A mutually satisfying sexual relationship is complex. It involves the pairing of two individuals, each with his or her own idiosyncratic set of likes and dislikes. Each, in the language of Simon and Gagnon (1968), with a unique ideal sexual script. A couple's sexual performance script-that is, what actually occurs during the couples' sexual encountermay be quite incongruent with one or both partners' ideal script with respect to desired duration of sexual activities.
Past research has attempted to determine heterosexual couples' actual and desired duration of both foreplay1 and intercourse. For example, early research by Kinsey and his colleagues (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953) found that women and men reported an average foreplay duration of approximately 12 minutes....