Tag Archives: sexual partners

Girl Talk: I Lied To My Gynecologist About My Number Of Sexual Partners

Rachel Kramer BusselMarch 14, 2013 //
Numbers Don't Matter
How many partners she's had is irrelevant. Read More »
What's Your Number?
Here's why I don't care. Read More »
Slut-Shaming Rant
silver linings playbook
It has no "silver lining." Read More »

I didn’t think I was ashamed of the number of sexual partners I’ve had in the 20 years I’ve been getting it on until I found myself filling in a number half the true total at a recent gynecologist appointment. Although I know doctors are trained not to judge, and this doctor in particular had been particularly kind, helpful and professional when I’d seen her previously, in my head, all of a sudden the number (at best an approximation as I haven’t kept an exact count in year) seemed like cause for alarm. Even if I never had to say it out loud and its size was simply one more piece of data for her to use in evaluating me, something about it made me erase what I’d typed in the online form and halve it. As it turned out, she didn’t even ask me a single thing about my number, so that fretting was for naught—except that it taught me a lesson: slut shaming isn’t just something other people do to us, but something we can do to ourselves. Keep reading »

The Top 10 Lies Women Tell Men

The FriskyApril 30, 2012 //
Lies We've Told
19 stupid lies we've told dudes we dated. Read More »
Online Dating Lies
The top 10 white lies people tell on their profiles. Read More »
Lies Women Tell Each Other
We need to stop lying to each other, ladies. Read More »

Ah, women. So mysterious! So enigmatic! We have more layers than an onion. And men, poor, poor men. Left to figure us out all on their own. Sorry! We don’t mean to be confusing. We just are. While many of us strive to be honest, truthful, and forthright, we do not always tell the truth. That is the truth. Sometimes (gasp!), we lie. Most of the time, though, these are little white lies, half-truths told to keep the peace. Other times, our lies are a little bigger — say, for example, when the subject is sex. In honor of National Honesty Day, here’s a cheat sheet of the mistruths that are most likely to come out of a woman’s mouth, and what men can learn about the lies, the sweet little lies, that women tell. (Don’t worry — we’ve got lies dudes tell coming later today…) Keep reading »

Soapbox: What’s Your Number? Here’s Why I Don’t Care

Emily Heist MossOctober 7, 2011 //
Numbers Don't Matter
How many partners she's had is irrelevant. Read More »
Don't Be A Jerk
You'll still get laid. Read More »
Romance...
How extraordinarily, delightfully inconvenient. Read More »

The previews for the Anna Faris vehicle “What’s Your Number?” couldn’t make me want to see that movie any less if they added “Exorcist”-style projectile vomiting. The premise, if you have magically managed to miss the media blitz, is that Faris’ character realizes her list of sexual partners has one more digit than most of her friends’. She spirals into a panic attack induced by slut-shaming and spends the rest of the movie trying not to add a new guy to the list. It’s supposed to be funny, but I can’t work up more of a response than a frustrated eye-roll and a long, exasperated sigh.

Here’s the thing about counting sexual partners: context matters. A number is just a number. It gives no background on the who, what, when, where, and why. If we want to judge people’s sexual activity (which I’m not convinced we do), the qualitative matters so much more than the quantitative. Keep reading »

Guy Talk: Why Does It Matter How Many Partners She’s Had?

Hugo SchwyzerOctober 5, 2011 //
What's Your Number?
Here's why I don't care. Read More »
Don't Be A Jerk
You'll still get laid. Read More »
Romance...
How extraordinarily, delightfully inconvenient. Read More »

This piece originally appeared on The Frisky and The Good Men Project in February, but is being republished on both sites as the film “What’s Your Number?” hits theaters nationwide.

Judging from what I read online and hear from my students, the question of the “number” is as compelling as ever. This month, Marie Claire ran an article, “What’s Your Number?” in which five women (whose numbers ranged from zero to 100) told their stories. The March issue of Cosmopolitan Australia features the same discussion, noting that 59 percent of readers surveyed thought knowing a partner’s exact number was important, and that 33 percent of those same readers had lied about their own pasts, claiming fewer sexual partners than they’d actually had.

The more men his girlfriend has slept with, the greater number of lovers to which she can compare his skills. It’s easier to win a contest against two than against 20, he figures.

Keep reading »

Which Names Get Laid The Most?

Kate Torgovnick/Kate-Book.comFebruary 17, 2011 //

Beware of guys named Chris, Charles, Dennis, and James. According to a new study from SmartDate.com, dudes with names that end in the letter ‘s’ tend to be “players”—their word, not mine. Guys with these names have more sexual partners in their lifetime than others—while the average guy in the study has slept with 5.2 partners, these guys have had sex with more like 10 or 11. Ditto for Matts and Lukes. Apparently, you’re better off finding an Edward, Dylan, Frank, or Jason—who, according to the survey, have only had a single partner. Unless of course, more experience is what you’re after.

Oh, but they did the same analysis on ladies’ names, too. Keep reading »

Dear Wendy: “How Many Sex Partners Is Too Many?”

Wendy AtterberryFebruary 2, 2011 //

Recently I was talking to my 21-year-old boyfriend about how many sexual partners was considered “too many.” I told him how there was a 21-year-old guy friend who says he’s had over 20 partners but they had each meant something to him so he didn’t see a problem with it; only when you have meaningless sex does it become a problem, he said. Most of my other friends, especially my girl friends, only have had a couple partners, and I have always thought that was the norm for most people my age. When I asked my boyfriend how many he thought was “too many,” he said that if you lose count, then that’s when it becomes too much. He also said that he’s had nine and didn’t think that that was a lot at all. I personally have only had one other partner, and when I found out that he had nine, it kind of took me by surprise. I’m not mad and don’t think any differently of my boyfriend or my friend than I did before, but I’m just curious, what do most people consider to be too many partners and at what age? — Number Cruncher

Keep reading »

Women Whose Names End In “A” Have More Sex

Amelia McDonell-ParryNovember 19, 2010 //

I don’t need a study to tell me that I was destined to be a hoochie mama, but here one is anyway. According to a French study, women whose names end in the letter “a” have more sexual partners over the course of their lifetime than the average woman, who typically has 4.4 partners. Um, try way, way, way above average. I’ve always been an overachiever. [Time] Keep reading »

Poll: How Do You Keep Track Of Your Former Lovers?

Ami AngelowiczJune 15, 2010 //

How Do You Keep Track Of Your Former Lovahs?

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7 Sexual Partners That Don’t (Have To) Count

Amelia McDonell-ParryJuly 7, 2009 //

If I were on the witness stand, under oath, and asked, “How many people have you had sexual intercourse with?” my response would be one or two digits higher than what I commonly tell people. It’s not that in either case I’m lying per se; it’s just that a few of my partners just don’t register on the same scale as the rest and I don’t want to count them. And I’m not alone. In everyday life, there may be a couple partners that the average person would leave out. There is just some sex that doesn’t really, well, count. Keep reading »

When It Comes To Sexual Partners, We Are Above Average

SimchaMarch 13, 2009 //

Either I am the world’s greatest slut (and need a T-shirt that says that, pronto), or there just isn’t enough love in this world! According to the National Center for Health Statistics, women have an median average of four sex partners in their lifetime. Please, I’ve been trying to have four partners this week! Now, perhaps this statistic also includes Granny No-One-Gets-In-My-Panties, but the number seems amazingly low with women like me, Madonna, Jenna Jameson, and Jezebel’s old Slut Machine, who are so beyond the average we’re probably off the CDC’s graph! Really, with all the tramps in the world upping the statistic, the national average still four? We can’t do all the men by ourselves! Actually perhaps we can. Men, on average, have nearly double the amount of sexual partners women do — lucky number seven. Guess everything I heard in high school was true, some girls are sluts and some girls are prudes. But one thing is clear, every dude is a sex machine. Lifescript.com]

Keep reading »

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