Study Says Men Want Significantly More Sex Partners Than Women
Does your body count really matter? If so, to whom?
The weird obsession we have with body counts, which can be observed almost anywhere on the Internet, is crazy. It emanates from a culture that tells us that the number of people you have sex with has some relevance to your personal worth and character.
This is bullshit.
But because of this bizarre cultural outgrowth, we make much ado about sex by the numbers.
It makes you feel like a car — like a machine — like you’re being judged by your mileage and nothing else. Like your partner is afraid you’re going to break down in the middle of the road, and they have to call AAA to fix you.
Some people have lost track of their body counts, other people keep meticulous tabs on every fleeting sexual encounter they’ve ever had.
Both men and women inflate and deflate the number of partners they’ve had when they lie, while the vast majority of people don’t actually lie about the number of partners they’ve had when answering the question to prospective partners.
Some people employ a “mixed strategy” of reducing their body count when asked by some people and boosting their body count when asked by other people.
The discussion about “body counts” takes two forms. Most people only experience the first. Everybody forgets about the second.
All Roads Lead to Home
The first conversation about your body count usually crops up when you’re first dating someone. It might be in the first couple of weeks, it might be months down the road, but eventually, your partner’s curiosity gets the best of them.
They finally muster up the courage and, with a sigh:
“How many people have you had sex with?”
They want to know how they stack up. They want to peer into your sexual history and see what’s there. And some people will make judgments about your future sexual behavior based on your sexual past.
We see this all the time in sayings like, “Once a cheater, always a cheater.”
Like an ancient astrologist charting the stars, they want to see what the future holds and if they’re likely to get hurt. There are definitely more sensible ways to go about doing so, but I digress.
The second discussion about your body count almost never comes up in relationships, but it’s much more important than the first. It doesn’t come up because monogamy is so deeply ingrained into our collective psyches. It’s the de facto modus operandi of relationships in most societies on earth.
The second question is, in my view, much more interesting:
“How many people would you like to sleep with?”
There are so many things about this question, so many ways it can be viewed, so many ways it can be conceived, and there’s so much it can tell us about someone else besides a stupid tally of how many people they’ve bedded in their archaic past.
How many people do you want to sleep with in your lifetime?
How many people do you want to sleep with in the next 5 years?
How many people do you want to sleep with in the next 20 years?
These questions tell us a lot more about the person we’re with than what they’ve already done. They don’t tell us where our partner has been, but where our partner is going.
And isn’t that really what people are usually after when they ask the first question?
It is.
A fascinating study from Norway, published in 2009 by Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair et al., asked study participants precisely this question. Researchers wanted to uncover any evolutionary mechanisms that might be driving our obsession with body counts.
Let’s Talk About Sex
This study flew under the radar, but it’s fascinating.
They asked people a series of questions about their sexual wants. Questions like:
“How often do you fantasize about having sex with someone other than your current or most recent partner?”
“Is sex without love okay?”
“How many partners have you had in the past year?”
“How many one-night stands have you had in your life?”
“Can you imagine yourself being comfortable and enjoying sex with different partners?”
“Do you have to be closely attached to someone, both emotionally and psychologically, before you could feel comfortable and fully enjoy sex with them?”
…and more…
This was to assess participants’ social attitudes towards sex. Once that data was all gathered, researchers poured through them to see what they could find.
And the findings were interesting.
Surprising as it may sound, men and women did not differ in their interest in obtaining a long-term partner. Both sexes were equal in their desire for a long-term partner.
Where they did differ was on the grounds of casual sex. Women were slightly, but significantly less interested in short-term sex partners than men were. This checks out with the evolutionary theory that men are more open to short-term sexual encounters because of their low parental investment.
An ejaculation takes between 9 seconds and 9 minutes, but a baby takes 9 months before another 19 years of raising it to adulthood. It’s no wonder women aren’t as open to short-term casual flings as men are. The consequences are far greater.
And most telling of all was the answer to the questions about future sex partners. When asked how many sex partners men and women would like to have, their answers differed radically.
Women said they’d like to have an average of five partners over the next thirty years. Men said they’d like to have an average of 25 partners over the next thirty years.
I’ll repeat that…
Women said that, if they could have anything they want like they’re a kid on Santa’s lap at the mall shouting out whatever tickles their fancy in terms of future sex partners, they would like to sleep with 5 people over the next thirty years.
When asked the same question, men said they’d like to sleep with 25 people over the next thirty years.
Men were also more likely to fantasize about someone other than their current partners, but only by a bit. 7% of men reported fantasizing about someone other than their current, or most recent partners, every single day, while only 1% of women said the same.
What I find interesting about all of this is what men think is “average” in terms of sexual “prowess” or, the number of partners that’s realistic. I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum, and I would certainly never shame anyone for having more casual sex, but I also think it’s important to have an idea of what sex ought to look like.
When it comes to penetrative sex (though this is an arbitrary distinction that centers on male pleasure, unfortunately), the average number of partners a person has in their lifetimes is 7.2.
Way to aim high, guys.
I guess it’s like Michelangelo said:
“The greater danger for most of us lies not… The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark”
Back to reality.
All jokes aside, I think men would be wise to sit down and have a long, honest conversation with themselves about what sex realistically looks like. It’s not like we see in nineties porno movies, where the guy bumps into the ditsy 19-year-old, and they’re shagging it out in a mall bathroom ten minutes later.
But it’s one thing to be realistic about what sex ought to look like, and it’s a whole other thing to judge others — or ourselves — for our sexual appetites, desires, and yes, even our body counts. This is an unfortunate hangover from centuries of institutions telling us that things like desire, happiness, sex, love, and joy are bad and that only a devout commitment to self-inflicted misery will suffice.
It’s time we shake off those old, dusty, archaic ideas and finally embrace the 21st-century.
If we want to know if a person’s committed to us, it’s best to act like the adults we are and ask them. And I sense asking how many partners someone wants to have, rather than how many partners someone has already had, is a great place to start.
It’s a much more appropriate question.
And it tells us where they’re going instead of where they’ve been.
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Three books I recommend checking out:
Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life
Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships
A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships
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