Why Are You Worried About Your Number?
Why are women so worried about their “number” that they are using all kinds of creative ways to get off on a technicality? If women have earned the right to have sex whenever and with whomever they want to, then why are they reluctant to acknowledge those decisions by tallying them up? In the caveman days, men probably used chalk to make marks celebrating their conquests. Then came carving notches on the bedpost, and most recently, the Little Black Book. Women keeping track is a relatively new phenomenon. I have no idea what my real number is. Not one guy I’ve ever been involved with has asked, and I’ve never asked a man. If women want to keep track to celebrate, that’s one thing. But keeping track, and then trying to find ways to fudge the number so that it doesn’t get too high? What’s that about?
One thing it proves is that we’re still living the sexual double standard. Even if we feel OK about our sexual experiences, we worry that the guy that we fall for won’t like it. We’re probably right. Research shows that men prefer to be in relationships with women with limited sexual experience.
Here’s an excerpt from a recent askmen.com survey:
| Q35: What is the maximum number of former partners you are comfortable with your girlfriend/wife having had? | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 35 | 38% | No more than 5 | 41% | 39% | 41% |
| 34% | No more than 10 | 33% | 33% | 30% | |
| 13% | No more than 20 | 12% | 14% | 16% | |
| 7% | None | 8% | 8% | 6% | |
| 5% | No more than 100 | 3% | 3% | 4% | |
| 3% | No more than 50 | 3% | 3% | 3% | |
That’s a problem for the modern woman; 74% of men are uncomfortable with a number over 10. Many women still in college are at double that. Of course, the double standard cuts both ways; I recently wrote about women not wanting to date man-whores.
When a guy asks how many people you’ve slept with, you could choose to tell him you don’t know, you could tell him the truth, or you could lie. Usually women lie by understating the number, though it’s also true that virgins sometimes lie to seem more experienced. So why are women lying to themselves as well? Here are some glimpses of the debate:
An article at 20-nothings asks “Do you count sex halvsies?” The writer is asked by a friend whether the sex counts if you say after a minute of intercourse, “Wait, I don’t want to.” The writer has the following response:
“If it goes in and out — one time, two times, five times – condom, no condom, you can’t quite remember — it is intercourse. I don’t need to go all Webster New American regarding penetration and consent. Bottom line — P in V and you’ve racked up another notch on the bed post my friend. I get it — and if you’re sorry that happened then I’m sorry that happened, but you had sex. And much like you can’t be a sort of pregnant — you can’t sort of have sex. You’re welcome to lie about it so you don’t feel like whatever having sex you regret makes you feel like, but then you’re lying about it, so just know that and move on from there.”
She believes that 70% of women lie about their number by not counting “sort-of’s.”
Amelia at The Frisky wrote a piece (satire, I hope?) claiming that sexual encounters don’t count if:
- It lasts less than ten seconds and no one finished.
- You can’t remember it.
- You didn’t give permission.
- You really, really, really regret it.
- You’re less than 51% sure that penetration occurred.
- He had whiskey dick.
- It happened in Vegas.
Last week, College Candy waded into the debate, publishing the viewpoints of individual staff:
- “There are some that just shouldn’t count. Like the guy who couldn’t keep it up, or the one who left while I was sleeping and I wouldn’t recognize again if he was lying in my bed completely naked.”
- “When you’re cuddling with your close guy friend and it just sort of happens.”
- “When he drools all over your face and chin.”
- “When you push him off and tell him to f*** off because you can tell it’s going to suck within seconds on any contact.”
- “When you tell yourself that it doesn’t because he’s a jerk/stalker/cheater/overall write off.”
- “If neither party remembers what happened, it doesn’t count.”
- “When it only lasts 30 seconds.”
- “When one of you quits and falls asleep halfway (or 1/4 of the way) through.”
- “When he pisses the bed.”
- “If he doesn’t orgasm, it doesn’t count.”
- “When you wake up to find he strongly resembles (and smells like) swamp thing.”
- “When your friends have to tell you that it happened/ exactly what happened.”
As an open-minded, reasonable person, here’s my judgment call on this question:
- P in V does indeed equal sex. So does P in A, don’t kid yourself about anal sex.
- Only consensual sex counts. Consent is tricky – some states, for example, hold that a woman cannot provide consent if she is intoxicated. If you believe you said yes, then you had sex.
- Doing everything BUT does not raise your total. Whether this is because of whiskey dick or some other reason, if it doesn’t get in there, you haven’t had sex.
- Your not having an orgasm is totally irrelevant. I think it’s fair to say that EVERY woman has had sex without an orgasm at least once. Or hundreds of times.
- His not having an orgasm is even more irrelevant. How good or crappy he turns out to be does not change the fact that you made a decision to have sex. You did it.
One creative woman I know decided that she didn’t want her number to go any higher this summer. So she only had sex with guys she’s already done. That’s fair and clever; I’ve got to give credit where it’s due! But I really don’t understand what difference it makes.
Bottom line: If you are worried about your number, you’re worried about how much sex you’re having. Either because it doesn’t feel right, or because you know you’ll be perceived as a sloot (add o’s as necessary) by guys with relationship potential. Either way, you should stop for a while, and see how that feels. If you’re not worried about your number, be safe, but have fun. That’s what your mothers and grandmothers fought the Sexual Revolution for.
No related posts.
I'm only worried about my number because I personally think it is too low, is that possible? I am 32 and it's 3. But consider I didn't start having sex until I was 20, then was married for 7 years, and have only been divorced for 2 years. Is it possible that I just justified why my number is so LOW? It's become a habit.
The last guy I dated actually did ask, and when I told him (right after our first time), that he made #3, he was a little taken aback, and I had to explain. I'm not ashamed that my number is low. However, I would personally like to have had more experience in the matter, not that anyone has ever complained, quite the opposite, but I digress.
I don't ask, because honestly I don't want to know. I am a girl and after all, I don't want to be laying there wondering what the girl before me or the girl before her looked like, and I don't want to be wondering about what she did to make his toes curls.
P in M is sex too; don't kid yourself about oral sex.
“When a guy asks how many people you’ve slept with, you could choose to tell him you don’t know, you could tell him the truth, or you could lie.”
Or, as long as you're also honest about your sexual health, you could just tell him that you'd prefer not to answer.
Rebekah, OMG, you are golden! A guy may be surprised to hear you've only been with three men sexually, but he won't mind, especially if you can demonstrate that you enjoy it! Honestly, one long, intimate relationship teaches a person more about sex than 25 hookups, and I believe that's a fact.
I totally relate to not wanting to know. I once saw a guy's wall calendar the morning after having sex with him for the first time, and one date about three weeks earlier had a woman's name written on it about 20 times. It was obvious they had had sex then, and that he had been really into it! Boy, did I wish I hadn't peeked at that. When it comes to past sexual histories, ignorance is bliss, at least for me.
Well, V, you're a guy, and I don't know if you generally want to know someone's number, but if you did, would you be assuming it included oral? Because I don't think that's generally how people define it. I can tell you if we start including oral, women are really going to freak out! I do agree with you that oral sex is sex, I'm just not sure most people would include it for this purpose.
Angharad, you are so right! I don't know how I missed that – of course you have the right to decline to answer. Good point also about sexual health – being honest about that is a moral obligation.
Somewhere in my late 20s, I stopped counting. For guys, it's often a matter of personal pride to be able to say, “I'm up to X” sexual partners. Like a lot of guys, I got the same kind of warm fuzzy feeling when I had added another girl to the list. It's not that I was just trying to get laid for the sake of a number, but there was certainly a part of me that didn't want to be thought of as inexperienced, or not able to get laid. In a way, keeping track of the number helped me to tell myself that I was experienced and desirable.
When I stopped counting, the main reason was that I realized how unimportant the past is. When I have sex with someone now, what matters is the reasons I'm doing it and whether or not it's a good experience for both of us. I don't ask my partners for their numbers, and when I'm asked, I can say honestly that I don't know. (I have had someone ask if the number was so high that I'd lost count. She had a very scared look on her face. Now I know to be ready to answer that question, too.)
I also stopped trying to differentiate between “sex” and “not sex.” Since I stopped counting, it has become pointless to ask myself if just getting a blowjob counts as having sex, or if fingering and going down on a woman means she's on my list.
Now that I don't count, I'm having a hard time figuring out why it ever seemed important in the first place. Sex shouldn't be a numbers game anyway, right? If you're with someone you want to be with, should you really decide what to do or not to do based on whether or not a number's going up? If you want the P in the V, grab the P and put it in the V, for crying out loud. Worrying about numbers is just worrying.
Oh… one other thing… it sounds scary to say that 70% of men might be upset at your number, but let's put it in perspective. You give me any criteria at all for dating, and I'll show you 70% of men who aren't going to be good matches for you based on it. If you're a woman who doesn't care about numbers, you should be trying to find a man who doesn't care about numbers, either. They're out there. Thirty percent of men, if we're to believe the blog post. Think about it this way — if numbers don't worry you, a man who worries about numbers is going to be a different kind of person than you, with a different way of looking at sexual values. It probably wouldn't work anyway, even if the number never came up in conversation.
Instead of worrying about all the people you aren't compatible with, why not go for the glass half full and start building your world around people you ARE compatible with!
hambydammit, will you marry me? You are so awesome. Amen to everything you have said here. Back in the day when I was dating, as I mentioned in my post, keeping track of one's number was just not done by women. I remember breaking up with my college boyfriend for six months, for another guy. This other guy and I did little else but screw. Then I got back together with the college bf. He actually asked me if I had ever had sex with the other guy, and I couldn't believe it. And then I said “no.” It was pathologically dysfunctional; he didn't want to know, so I didn't want him to know. It preserved harmony. There's something to be said for that. Of course, he really did know that I'd had a lot of sex with that other guy – but he appreciated my willingness to downplay it. When we ask for another person's number, what we're really asking for is reassurance. Reassurance that we can hold our own sexually, reassurance that the person we're with is healthy, reassurance that sex with us will be special in some way, not just another notch on the bedpost.
I agree that it's not gonna work if you're a girl who loves sex, including NSA sex, and you're focusing on some guy who's conservative about that stuff. It's all about the match. But mostly, it's like angharad said – you have the right to say you prefer not to answer, and there are definitely people out there who prefer not to ask.
This article reminded me of something written on a website about teen sexuality. It's a wonderful site that allows teenagers to email with questions, and have them publicly answered.
Anyway, an American girl with sexual experience from a religious background emailed asking what she should do about her boyfriend, who, on getting drunk, shouted at her that she was “too dirty and used” for him to ever marry. And, on sobering up, admitted that her amount of sexual partners did mean he would never spend his life with her. This just sickened me- not only that he has such an opinion about a woman at all, but that he was fine staying with her and not mentioning that it would never last, when she clearly thought it would.
Sex is still taboo, no matter how free we want it to be, and there's still so much to be done about it. But now that there's various lines to cross, first loosing one's virginity, then passing certain amounts of partners, then “Have you ever…?” style situations, it seems if not worse, much more confusing.
Hi elleohelle, nice to see you! Thanks for weighing in. That is a horrible story, though I'm sure it's very common. Of course most guys would jump at the chance to be sexually active, then hold the girl to the old double standard. She's now dirty and used, whereas he is THE MAN! And while I do believe that women are more sexually free than ever before in some ways, it's often unclear what the real consequences of our choices will be. I think it's important for women to come to terms with their own sexuality, and then to choose men who share their values.
Hi elleohelle, nice to see you! Thanks for weighing in. That is a horrible story, though I'm sure it's very common. Of course most guys would jump at the chance to be sexually active, then hold the girl to the old double standard. She's now dirty and used, whereas he is THE MAN! And while I do believe that women are more sexually free than ever before in some ways, it's often unclear what the real consequences of our choices will be. I think it's important for women to come to terms with their own sexuality, and then to choose men who share their values.
If I may give in my 2 cents here, I believe there is a reason for the double standard, Why? because we do not praise men who have been “chaste” like women and the reason is that it is harder for men to get sex than women because as you said women are the gatekeepers. If women were not gatekeepers then this issue would not have risen up. The reason is that moma's baby's are popa's maybes. I for example would definitely not want to raise another man's child.
Same thing with employment, would you hire someone who changes jobs every year? would you go into a company known for firing employees without a notice? everyone should do his due diligence. Though there are no guarentees in life, If someone has had a lot of partners (man or women) that does give hints that this person is into short-term dating, so there are more risks involved.
“I remember breaking up with my college boyfriend for six months, for another guy. This other guy and I did little else but screw. Then I got back together with the college bf.”
I hate to say this and I mean no offense but a man who GLADLY takes back his gf who LEFT HIM TO FUCK ANOTHER MAN is weak and a fool…what about self-pride, self-respect and dignity? Would you do the same if you were in his place?
anyways, interesting post!
Hey, Valmont, yes you are correct. Jealousy is an emotion that evolved because it helped men keep women from cuckolding them. The worst fate for a man is to dedicate his life and his resources to raising someone else's offspring. That's why men will always prefer women with less sexual experience than themselves.
I have to agree that my college BF was weak and a fool. I had the upper hand there, and after we got back together it was doomed. In all fairness, he made me jump through hoops for months to get him back, but still. And once I'd done it, and he was all about it again, he seemed a lot less attractive. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it's human nature. When we willingly make a fool of ourselves for someone, they'll see us forever as a fool.
“I'm ashamed to admit it, but it's human nature. When we willingly make a fool of ourselves for someone, they'll see us forever as a fool.”
so true, especially in the business world…first impression are hard to break and second chances are scarce.