Happy Valentine's Day: 36 percent of Americans would rather give up sex than their remote

Logitech's new study on trends in remote control usage reveals a depressing, if not shocking, conclusion: Romance loses out to the clicker for a notable percentage of Americans.

The peripherals company has strategically leaked a few results from the report, Global Remote Control Trends Study, in the run-up to Valentine's Day, including the finding that more than a third of Americans (36 percent, to be exact) would rather forgo sex for a month than give up their remotes. Even a fifth of French respondents answered similarly, ready to pour cold water on l'amour.

It gets worse. Twenty-seven percent of respondents would prefer to stop using their toothbrushes for a month than lose access to the remote control. That may be related to the fact that nearly half of households in the seven countries surveyed have at least four remotes, a number that grew over the 2005-2010 period.

While there's something a bit alarming about some of the above results, one finding that should stun no one is that a majority of respondents, regardless of country, feel they are the "owners" of the remote -- whether or not their significant other agrees.