Oh, lucky day! This is the day of the week Canadians are most likely to have sex.
Originally published June 6th, 2017
There was time you'd have to hire an old-timey private eye to get a sense of the goings-on in a typical Canadian household. Stake outs, sleuths peering through windows with clunky cameras, gumshoes rifling through trash bins in high-waisted pants and beat up fedoras. All ancient history. Now we just need Big Data, or your grocery list. From the intimate to the banal, your shopping habits reveal everything. In Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit he dedicates a chapter to just that called How Target Knows What You Want Before You Do (the book's a worthy read). Companies now know with disconcerting accuracy what you're up to in your home based solely on your purchases. One room in particular gets a lot of squinty scrutiny from Big Data's all seeing eye: the bedroom. Yes, Big Data knows when you're going to have sex this week.
A recent survey of American consumer habits done by Instacart, an online grocery service, confirms that condom purchases are most rare on Mondays (dooming it to forever be the least sexy day of the week). The rest of the work week doesn't see much in condom sales either. But the frequency starts to spike on the weekend. As the following graph shows, Saturday is the banner day for condom sales when you look at proportion of condoms bought per 100k standard shopping items. Granted, sexy Saturdays and moderate Mondays may not surprise you, and you may even be tempted to discredit the data in that it's American and all data can be skewed to various ends. But stay your doubt, Canada. Big Data's got our number (numbers, actually).
Another study heavily backs up the condoms purchased to copulation trend correlation. It suggests that we, just like our American cousins, enjoy our sex on Saturdays. More than half of all Canadians, 56 percent, are likely to have weekend sex. Saturday, however, is the preferred day for congress by far (67 percent of weekend lovers get frisky that day). You can set your watch by it. Literally. About 44 per cent of Canadians wait for the clock to strike 6 p.m. before letting love take them.
I'm also happy to report that the data showed that we have sex a little more than lovers in the US of A. Don't let your Canadian pride get the better of you just yet. We lost points on spontaneity. In fact, of the 13 countries (and 13,000 humans) surveyed, we were among the least impulsive when it came to sexy times. I guess we're planners when it comes to bedroom business.
The data dealing with the cheeky habits of Canadians revealed some other interesting facts. I'm afraid that globally, we're a touch stodgy.
Canadians between the ages of 46 and 60 typically have sex about 1.35 times a week. The global average being 1.41 (come on, Canada, you're better than this). I'll let you figure out what a .35 fractional sexual act may look like but all my imaginings and theories have left me unsatisfied. If you want to know if you're having more or less sex than the average Canuck, note that 20 percent of those surveyed said they were getting lucky less than once a month. Only 16 percent of the other countries could say the same, meaning they're getting in some extra sex fractions (or wholes, sorry) on the monthly. Again, we can do better. Let's use those super sexy planning habits to our advantage and schedule some Ohs, Canada.
Sass aside, increasing our sexual activity during the week would serve us. Singles, women in particular, were more prone to have sex during the week, something that might make them perform better at work. A recent study proved that people having sex the night before improved job performance and overall job satisfaction the very next day. A sound case for turning that miserable Monday sex data around.
Still, if you value your privacy, you may want to contemplate paying cash and staggering any prophylactic shopping sprees. Should bolstering your personal sex stats be of greater concern, Saturday, for the time being, is still your best bet for getting lucky. Do plan accordingly. Until Big Data tells us otherwise.
Marc Beaulieu is a writer, producer and host of the live Q&A show guyQ LIVE @AskMen.