Why do Indian men have sex so late?

From a fractured understanding of interpersonal communication to the dynamics of marital stress, sex in India is often loaded with sociological and gendered realities

Beyond the colourful exteriors that harken to a bygone era, a plethora of culinary adventures and the drying khejri trees lining the dust-rimmed streets, the city of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan is a tourist’s paradise. But only for so long. Once you are done gallivanting in the famous Sam sand dunes and taking golden-hour selfies outside the fort, the allure of the city perhaps starts to fade away.

The golden city has at least always been a faded memory in the mind of 27-year-old Aahana Rajrasiya (first name changed for legal purposes), who escaped a dangerous marriage with a significant age gap while she was 19 with a man who was 55. The dynamics were simple: He’d frantically undo his cotton pyjamas, have sex with her and just leave once he came.

The whole act would last for not more than five minutes. On nights that he was drunk, he’d doze off on her like a deadweight, refusing to move. Beyond those excruciating five minutes, he hardly spoke to her and would much rather prefer the company of his friends from the army with whom he sat for hours at the nearby chowk over endless servings of chai and desi hookah.

“That it took a prolonged court battle to escape the disproportionate world of Jaisalmer is beside the point,” Rajrasiya says. “For my part, I regret the fact that my first introduction to sex—something I’d only romanticised thus far—took place at a young age with a man who clearly didn’t respect it.”

According to the periodic National Family Health Survey recently released by the union health ministry, the median Indian woman has sex for the first time at the age of 18.9 years and the median Indian man at 24.8 years. What explains this chasm? In cases like Rajrasiya’s, the long shadow of early marriages only widens this gap further. Sex, then, becomes just one of the many accessories that enable age-old patriarchal structures. But there are other deeper, less apparent reasons at the heart of this significant gap, too.

Evolutionary ways

Intimacy coach Pallavi Barnwal tells The Established that apart from the obvious sociological ills that might contribute to women having sex at an earlier age than men, there is an evolutionary angle at the heart of it all. “For the longest time, we adapted by approaching sex as a competition for mates,” she says. “Even in nature, it’s the male counterpart that needs to be loaded with additional biological features to attract the females—the plumage of the peacock, the antlers of the male deer, the mane of the lion and so on.” The idea is that a woman will look for the men she needs to have sex with by carefully assessing all her options, thus making early sex in women a much wider reality.

Additionally, women hit puberty sooner than men. Since 2016, various news reports have pointed out that the onset of early puberty, also referred to as precocious puberty, is now widespread in Indian women. Various pediatric doctors warned that precocious puberty may end up leading to higher sexual urges at an age where there might not be enough safe avenues to make sense of it or even the emotional maturity to handle it.

Barnwal explains that subconsciously and biologically speaking, women are always in a race against time because, unlike men, their fertility rate drastically reduces after a certain age. In this context, the biological drive to maximise the early age bracket where fertility might be at its peak might have a significant impact on why they might choose to have sex earlier.

Sea of fears

Apart from factors associated with biology, early marriage and evoluton that might influence Indian women to have sex bang at the cusp of legal adulthood, relationship counsellor Ruchi Ruuh tells The Established that men might grapple with a range of fears that might severely impact the complicated nature of courtship and sex. “The fear of rejection is an important factor to note here as most Indian men still wear massive egos on their sleeves,” she says. “They would rather not indulge a woman than getting rejected by her.”

This fear is further compounded by a severe lack of communication where some men might have a hard time articulating their desires and needs in ways that don't come across as outright creepy. “They have a difficulty in asking for sex too. If it's served on a platter by a willing partner, they'll go for it. Most of the young women keep waiting for the men to make the first move which is a result of social conditioning so as to not appear too desperate or experienced,” says Ruuh.

In urban cities in India where younger people are faced with the prospect of salary cuts and unreasonable rent, many Indian men end up either staying with their parents or crashing with their relatives. However, this is the beginning of the social awkwardness that sets in early in men who might simply lack the social skills needed to navigate the dating space and even the basic etiquettes, no thanks to their heavily pampered and cocooned environment.

“Most single Indian men keep living with their parents even until much later in life,” shares Ruuh. “So the lack of privacy and autonomy to bring a sexual partner home adds to delayed sexual experience. Things are changing with OYO rooms but it still remains a problem, especially in second- and third-tier cities.”

Another critical dimension to this question of why Indian men on average have sex so late can be attributed to performance anxiety. “As there is never a talk about what actual sex is, men heavily rely on porn to teach them how to perform. For its part, porn teaches them nothing and instead shatters their self-esteem around penis size, duration of the actual act and gives them a wrong body image about themselves and their partners,” concludes Ruuh.

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