Noisy Sexy Neighbor Survey: The results are in!!
Feel free to let loose in bed this Valentine's Day if you can bear the awkward morning-after elevator ride: Our loud neighbor-sex survey found that although two-thirds of apartment dwellers overheard a neighbor having sex and more than half wished they hadn't, almost none complained.
However, you may still want to muzzle your moans if you find it creepy that nearly a fifth of those we surveyed become aroused by their neighbors' mating sounds.
Read on for the highlights:
1. You are probably not as quiet as you think
Of 407 people we surveyed, 68 percent reported hearing a neighbor having sex. The specific sounds overheard were generically reminiscent of Halloween: Thumping (60%), moaning (56%), screaming (28%) and “other” (23%).
2. One neighbor’s audio porn is another one's nuisance
Just how did our survey-takers feel about these erotic soundtracks?
Twenty-six percent claimed indifference, while others reported feeling aroused (16%), annoyed (19%), jealous (19%), disgusted (11%) or anxious (9%).
(We digress for a tragiocomic survey moment, relayed by one of our interns-on-the-street:
Intern: “How does hearing your neighbors in bed make you feel?”
Woman: “Jealous.”
Man, concerned: “Really?”
Intern: “Have your neighbors ever complained about you having loud sex?”
Woman, blunt and dejected: “NO.”
“It was sad,” relays our eye-witness intern. “I can almost guarantee that when they went home that night, they let go of all inhibitions and rocked the house. Or broke up.”)
Even though more than half of our respondents owned up to a negative reaction, 89 percent said they had never complained to their neighbor, the management or a staff member. (See The agony of the ecstasy: 4 tips for overcoming loud neighbor sex.)
“I would be afraid they might complain about me,” elaborated a twentysomething woman on the Lower East Side.
3. Nighttime is not necessarily the right time
Most people reported overhearing their neighbors’ conjugal moments in the evening (29%) or the middle of the night (46%).
A third would prefer that loud fornicators do their thing in the afternoon; others voted for the evening (20%) and the middle of the night (35%)--except for one enthusiastic respondent who noted that she would like her neighbors to have sex all the time.
Note to early risers: Almost no one wants to hear you in the morning (12%).
4. What goes around comes around
While most people (88%) said they’d never been on the receiving end of a loud-sex complaint, about a quarter admitted that they try to keep quiet, while a third said it depended on their blood alcohol content.
"I'm normally not loud, but if I'm drinking, it's not until the next morning that I'm actually terrified about what my neighbors heard," one Lower East Side woman told us.
Related posts:
The agony of the ecstasy: 4 tips for overcoming loud neighbor sex
What to do about those prostitutes in your building
The $100,000 love affair: How your super's sex life can cost you money
Private dancers: Tales from the elevator security cam
