5 Major Myths About Intimacy You Should Not Believe

To better separate fact from fiction, we've debunked some of the most common sex myths. How often do we hear over and over again that the key to intimacy in your life is about finding someone to have a close relationship with? What if I were to tell you that to create true intimacy, YOU are the person you have to become most intimate with?

Here are 5 myths of intimacy, and how to begin having an intimacy in your own life.

* Sex burns major calories

Experts estimate thirty minutes of sex burns 85 to 150 calories. Theoretically, you need to burn about 3,500 calories to lose a pound of body weight, so if you were using up 100 calories every time you had sex, you could lose one pound if you had sex 35 times. The problem is this: Most people are not having sex for thirty minutes. Instead, the average duration of sex is closer to three to seven minutes, according to a study in The Journal of Sexual Medicine. (Fun fact: Sex may not burn a lot of calories—but having sex once a week may help you live longer.) Your best bet is to enjoy sex for all the great things it can do for your pleasure centres and feelings of closeness and intimacy, and save your calorie-burning rumination for treadmill time at the gym.

* Sex can give you a heart attack

Having sex more often is associated with having a healthier heart. A study in The American Journal of Cardiology found that men who reported having sex twice a week or more had a lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease than men who had sex once a month or less often. This seemed to be independent of erectile dysfunction, which is a known risk factor for heart disease. The chance of having a heart attack while you are having sex is also thought to be very low. What if your heart has already had problems? The reality is that the physical exertion most people put in when having sex is similar to walking up two flights of stairs.

* Oysters and chocolate are turn-ons

No study has ever shown any sexually enhancing effect from oysters. They do contain a lot of zinc, which sperm need to be healthy, but otherwise, scientists have found no special ingredient to suggest it has any sexually enhancing effects. Several studies suggest that chocolate is tied to lower blood pressure and better functioning of blood vessels, which may enhance blood flow to the penis (important for erections), but this is just speculation.

* Men think about sex every seven seconds

A study in the Journal of Sex Research effectively debunks this myth. Looking to tally up the true number of times men (and women) actually thought about sex in a day, the university had 238 students keep track of their thoughts about food, sex, or sleep for one whole week. The findings revealed men think about sex far less than you think, averaging about 19 sex thoughts per day instead of the nearly 8,000 thoughts per day that would be netted if men were really thinking about sex every seven seconds. Thoughts about food came in close second, with 18 thoughts per day, while sleep garnered 11 thoughts per day. As for the women, they averaged about 10 thoughts about sex, 15 thoughts about food, and 8.5 thoughts about sleep per day.

* Woman always experience orgasm with penetrative sex

Not all women have an orgasm during penetrative vaginal sex. In fact, a study published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy found that only 18.4 percent of women said intercourse alone led them to have an orgasm while 36.6 percent said clitoral stimulation was necessary for orgasm during sex. Meanwhile, an additional 36 percent indicated that, while clitoral stimulation was not needed, their orgasms felt better if their clitoris was stimulated during intercourse.