Chicago bares

We asked about your sex lives—or rather, we begged, pleaded and otherwise seduced you to take our online survey. After all of this,about 1,000 of you gave up the goods. Here’s what we learned from our semiscientific study of Chicagoans’ sex lives.

Of the nearly 1,000 readers who kissed or licked and told, 57 percent were women and the rest were men (except for two transgender, female-to-male individuals). On average, the women were a little younger than the dirty (in a good way) somewhat older men (31 versus 37 years old)—our youngest one was 19 and the oldest was 68.

Regardless of what you do on the side, 80 percent of you identified as straight, 13 percent as gay or lesbian, and 7 percent as bisexual with a few sprinklings of queer, questioning and “not sure.” About half of you were in committed relationships (married, engaged or otherwise locked down), a third were dating around, and the rest were going it alone. While 3 percent of you weren’t sure if you had kids (have you never heard of condoms?), most of you (80 percent) didn’t have any kids—which is probably why you have the time to not only have so much sex but to go online and tell us about it. And you came from all over Chicago—including the ’burbs. So let’s see what you’ve been up to:

Whatever you want to call yourselves, 7 percent of women and 71 percent of men had sex with women in the past year. And 84 percent of women and 31 percent of men (including a few “straight” men) had sex with men. Lots of you got busy with sex toys in the past year, too (71 percent of women, 34 percent of men), but we’ll get to that later.

Like many of you men during your first time, we’re jumping straight to orgasm. About 70 percent of women have had an orgasm from vaginal intercourse. As far as the quality of those orgasms, some researchers now believe some feel more relaxing or satisfying than others, and it turns out many Chicagoans agree. We asked women to rate their orgasms on a scale of 1 (least satisfying) to 10 (most satisfying)—not surprising, they were all phenomenal. Self-love (from vibrators, hands, showers, etc.) rated a 7.5, which closely followed vaginal intercourse (7.9), then receiving manual stimulation (8.1). And at the top? Receiving oral sex, at an utterly orgasmic 8.2. It’s worth noting that one woman rated vaginal intercourse orgasms at a 10—but said only with her lover, not her husband. Ouch.