Men do not, in fact, think about sex every seven seconds, according to a new study, so stop thinking that they do (Or if you’re a guy, quit trying to keep up with this particular urban legend.) Men think about sex 18 times a day, compared to 10 times a day for women, so the ratio isn’t nearly as out of whack as most people think it is.

Men also think about sleep and food more than women do, researcher Terri Fisher, a psychologist at The Ohio State University, Mansfield, told LiveScience.

“The stereotype is that men think about sex constantly and women rarely [think about it],” Fisher said. But that's not what she and her colleagues found. There was a broad range in the number of sex thoughts, from several participants who recorded one thought a day, to a male participant who recorded 388 thoughts in a day. Even for that one guy, we’re only talking about him having a sexual thought every 158 seconds, Fisher said, after allowing for sleep time.

So next time you ask a guy you know what he’s thinking about and he says, “Nothing,” don’t immediately go, “Oh, he’s thinking about sex, or he is about to.” Because he might be thinking about taking a nap, or having a snack. Or he might actually be thinking about nothing. We’d like to see some research on that.