What's Your Number?

by Valerie Cabrera Krause and Erin Torneo

Imagine if Facebook.com or Friendster showed not just how many people you’re connected to, but how many people you’ve hooked up with. What would your sex degrees of separation say about you?

Thankfully, Facebook doesn’t offer that feature (yet). But chances are, when you start seeing someone, this dreaded question is going to come up. It might start off as a joke, and we tell ourselves it doesn’t matter anyway, but the fact is, we’ve got a lot riding on those numbers.

Why do (some) women ask?

Monogamous relationship potential: This is the “what kind of guy is he” issue. Is he long-term relationship man, or a one-night stand? You can’t come out and say, “Are you the guy my mother warned me about?” so asking straight up for hard numbers is a way to see where he’s coming from.

When a guy boasts a figure that forces his date into an SAT-style frenzy (If he was sixteen years old when he lost his virginity, how many people would he have to sleep with per year to arrive at fifty-three by the time he was twenty in 2006?), it can be a red flag (Warning! Not relationship material.) But if a guy is sharing intimate details of his sexual history in an honest way, it could mean he wants you to know about his past because he thinks you may be around in his future.

What’s the girl-on-girl point of view? “That’s such a hetero question,” remarked one lesbian friend, rolling her eyes. “If I hear someone’s been with a lot of women, I’m psyched. I figure she’s really going to know what she’s doing in bed.” Something that did impact her perception of numbers—whether or not a gay woman has had sex with a man before, or is “pure.” For some, she explained, it’s a matter of pride, or showing you aren’t just a GUG (gay until graduation).

The Goldilocks number

Like Amanda, there are many women who decide on a cap to their number of conquests. The number can vary from five to twenty-five, but a lot of women feel there is an appropriate end number. Sandy held up one hand and showed us her four fingers. When she got to five, the thumb, she explained, it had to be “dum, dum, dee dum.” Looking back, she regretted numbers three and four, because it meant that when she next found herself between the sheets it had to be with her future husband.

For other women, this Goldilocks number is merely the public figure that they use as their answer to the question, even though it is not the “true” number. Why? Let’s face it: The sexual revolution might have happened over forty years ago when women were still expected to be virgins at marriage, but we’ve still got a ways to go in overcoming the stigma of the hyper-sexualized woman. (Most men wouldn’t think twice about sleeping with Samantha from Sex and the City, but men say almost universally that they would pick Charlotte to date.)

Our advice: don’t set an end number. If you meet your mate before reaching your cap, are you going to squander a perfectly good match just so you can sow some more oats?

The highs and lows

Sometimes a very small number for a woman or man can scare off a suitor too. Fears of a clingy, relationship-seeking, “I love you” after the deed or just bad sex have all been cited as reasons a low count could spell trouble. Rebecca wouldn’t exactly call herself a prude, but had been wrapped up in a bad relationship for many years. Once it ended, she joined the singles scene again, only to be embarrassed by how low her number was compared to her peers. She embarked on a quest to up her numbers.

Those of you who tend to round up your score when asked, take note: A recent study in the journal Sex Roles challenged the notion that men with a high number are regarded as studs. Some eight thousand people assessed fictional men and women who had varying numbers of sexual partners. Authors Michael Marks and R. Fraley from the University of Illinois found that the more sex partners an individual had—regardless of gender—the less intelligent they appeared.

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