Couple Couldn't Conceive Because They've Been Having Sex the Wrong Way for Four Years

A Chinese married couple—who were desperately trying to conceive—were told they had been having sex the wrong way for four years.

The young pair, whose identities have been kept anonymous, went to see obstetrician Liu Hongmei after they failed to get pregnant despite having sex on a regular basis, reported the Guiyang Evening News. During their appointment, the wife admitted that sex was “usually painful” which prompted Liu to perform on a gynaecological examination.

"The couple were very young, the man 26 and the woman 24. They were very healthy, but, despite being married for four years, couldn't conceive,” Liu said. "Their family was giving them a lot of stress because of it."

The results were unexpected. Liu found that the couple were mistakenly having anal intercourse rather than vaginal. According to the Guiyang Evening News, Liu gave the couple a sex-education handbook and within months, they had fallen pregnant. To show their appreciation, the pair sent Liu a live hen and 100 eggs as a gift.

"Four years of marriage and neither the husband nor wife knew how to get pregnant. Couples so lacking in general knowledge are very rare," Liu said. "But it is not uncommon for people to lack or have misconceptions regarding sexual knowledge."

Although China’s alarming lack of sex education has been a widely-discussed issue in resent years, little progress has been made to address the problem. Today, the topic of sex remains largely taboo in schools.

On May, 11 Chinese students at Beijing Normal University held a demonstration demanding the government provide better sex education for its youth. The protestors held signs that read “Adult videos can’t be our sex education, universities must say yes to sex education” and “We want to enjoy safe sex lives.”

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File photo: A Chinese couple who were trying to conceive for four years were told they had been having sex the wrong way. Getty

China’s National Center for STD/AIDS prevention found 115,000 news cases of HIV in 2015 across the mainland, 14.7 percent of those who tested positive were between 15 and 24 years old, CNN reported. A select amount of universities now have vending machines that dispense home HIV testing kits.

"Machines alone can't solve the problem unless there's follow-up education to help students," Xiong Binqi, vice president of the Beijing-based 21st Century Education Research Center, said.

"Sex education faces great challenges in China," Jing Jun, a professor of sociology at Beijing’s Tsinghua University told CNN. "At Tsinghua, students take sex education classes where they learn basic knowledge about sex safety, condom use, etc. As far as I know, this is the first time most of my students have ever taken such a class."