Sex, lies and the gender gap
By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz
Published January 18 2007

Those were the findings from a 2004 ABC "Primetime Live" survey that asked 1,500 adults how many people they'd had sex with. The typical American's sexual track record is likely on the more modest end of that spectrum.

Because of a few people who reported having abnormally high numbers of sex partners (one man reported more than 400), the averages skewed high, survey researchers said. A more accurate measure, they said, may be the median—the midpoint between the high and low numbers.

Why such a discrepancy between the sexes? Men long have been considered more eager to jump into bed than women, so the divergent numbers may reflect actual behavior. But they also may reflect how men and women lie about their sexual pasts to conform to what's expected of them.

Because there's social pressure for men to be experienced, they tend to exaggerate their conquests, while women, expected to be more chaste, tend to shave some lovers off their lists, said sex therapist Ian Kerner. That sexual double standard is weakening, however, as people waiting longer to get married rack up more partners, and pop culture celebrates sexually liberated women.

"In our post-'Sex and the City' age, men are a lot more comfortable with the idea that women have a number that's closer to the guy's number," he said.

Another theory seeks to blame memory differences, rather than deliberate deception, for the disparate sex tallies of men and women.

According to a study by psychologist Norman Brown of the University of Alberta, men tend to give ballpark figures of their conquests and err on the high end, while women tend to itemize their lovers—ticking off Tom, Dick, Harry, etc.—which can lead to underestimation.