What to Do When
She Asks
You How
Many Women
You’ve
Slept With
Should you fib? Hide under the table? Experts explain how to navigate the dicey get-to-know-you conversation
Could your sexual history make or break your relationship? That’s what a new (unscientific) survey conducted by Superdrug Online Doctor, an online pharmacy in the UK, suggests.
In the survey of more than 2,000 Europeans and Americans, 30 percent of the respondents said they’d be at least somewhat likely to end a relationship if they found out their partner had too many previous sexual partners.
What the heck is “too many”?
On average, the women surveyed said they’d
consider anyone who had slept with 15 or more
partners as “too promiscuous.” Men set the limit at 14 partners.
Plus, more than two thirds of the respondents
said they thought that sexual histories should
be discussed within the first four months of a relationship.
Clearly this all makes answering the sex
number question a terrifying proposition if you’re in the double digits.
Do you lie? Change the subject? Tell
the truth and hope for the best?
We didn’t know either, so we asked two women with Ph.D.s.
DO YOU HAVE TO REVEAL YOUR SEX NUMBER?
Surprise! Both experts we polled
give you permission to dodge the question entirely.
First of all, it could be too early to have such an
intimate conversation, says Leslie Bell, Ph.D.,
a psychotherapist based in Berkeley, California.
Say someone asks you about your sexual history
on the third date, for example, and you don’t feel
comfortable delving into the ex files yet. That’s reasonable, Bell says.
Just tell your date: “I’d love to get to that point,
but I’d like to get to know you a little better before we talk about that.”
Even down the road, though, there’s really no
reason you should have to disclose your number, says sex
researcher Kristen Mark, Ph. D., the director of the
Sexual Health Promotion Lab at the University of Kentucky,
Her reasoning: What’s the point of sharing that information?
That number of women you slept with in the
past doesn’t usually have anything to do with
the relationship you’re currently in
(as long as you use protection and get tested for STIs).
So if you don’t want to answer,
say: “Look, I’m sorry I’m not willing to share
this information,
but I don’t see how it’s relevant to our relationship,” says Mark.
If your partner seems annoyed by that,
don’t get defensive. Just calmly ask her why
she wants to know in the first place,
Mark says. Try: “How do you see this affecting our relationship?”
Then you can have a more productive
conversation about what you both
value in a relationship. Maybe she’s
actually more concerned about fidelity, for example.
Most likely, what she wants
most in a partner has nothing to do with the
exact number of notches on your bedpost.
IS IT OK TO FIB ABOUT YOUR SEX NUMBER?
If you do decide to tell your partner
about your past, just be honest, Mark and Bell both advise.
Even if you don’t think fibbing
about it is a big deal, the truth will
probably come to the surface eventually
if you stay together, Bell says. And then you’ll be
caught in a lie, which could hurt her trust in you.
If you’re worried that your number is going to
seem high, prep a little speech in advance in case she raises her eyebrows.
Explain how you got to that number and
what those different periods in your life
meant to you, says Bell. For example,
you might have thought sleeping around
in college was fun, but now you’re ready to settle down.
Or maybe you still want to sleep with lots of
different people—in which case, she deserves
to know that about you anyway.
Regardless, your exact number of sexual
partners is just one detail in your history,
Mark says. It’s part of who you are, but
obviously it’s not the whole story. If she
lets it make or break your relationship,
then maybe you and her weren’t compatible in the first place.
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