What's Your Sex Number?
Sharing your bedroom history with a significant other can lead to a more honest relationship—or just breed insecurity
By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz
Published January 18 2007

Barely a week into their courtship, Jen Ball and her boyfriend exchanged numbers.
Not phone numbers, but how-many-people-have-you-slept-with-in-your-life numbers. Touchy territory, to be sure, as the new couple faced the final tally, and her list stretched longer than his.

"At first he was like, 'Oh,' " recalls Ball, now 24, who has been dating that same boyfriend—No. 13 on her list—for four years now. "But he was just weirded out for a second, and then it was fine."

The counting of the bedpost notches is a rite of passage in many relationships, and it can be a contentious one. While some think the conversation is critical for an honest and healthy relationship, others call it a recipe for disaster or just plain unnecessary.
Ball, a bartender and aspiring filmmaker who lives in Lakeview, said she thinks it's important for couples to be candid about prior sexual partners as part of getting to know one another, though in the end the actual numbers don't matter.

"I want to know where somebody's coming from, but I don't really get hung up on the information," Ball said.

But to others, the numbers matter quite a bit, especially when health is on the line.
Joe Scigowski, 22, of Humboldt Park notes that "the more people you're with, the better the odds are that you will have an STD."

So concerned was Scigowski's friend Julia Ciaccio, 24, about the prospect of disease that she stopped seeing a guy in college after she found out the roster of women he'd bedded numbered in the 20s.

Ciaccio of Lakeview said she always asks partners to reveal how many people they've slept with, mostly for health concerns, but also because it's a reflection of their character. A long list of conquests, for example, suggests a person is in search of validation.
"It shows how much they respect the other person and how much they respect themselves," Ciaccio said. "I don't want to be [a guy's] confidence booster."

Fear of such attitudes is why some people prefer to keep their sexual pasts private, as too much information might raise undo worry and harm a relationship.

"It's nobody's business, and people get the wrong perception," said Nicole Dugger, 26, of Lakeview. "A relationship is about who you are, but if people know how many people you've had sex with, they judge you."

Dugger's friend Mike Carlson, 27, agrees that it's best to adopt a don't ask, don't tell policy when it comes to sexual histories. He said his curiosity has gotten the best of him in the past, and he has asked girlfriends about their prior affairs, only to wish he hadn't.

"I think when you have a girlfriend, you put her on a pedestal," Carlson said. "You get a different perception of a person when you know [how many people she's slept with]."
To avoid such conflict, some people fudge their running totals.

Dugger admits she's downplayed her sexual experience at times and just "picks a general number that's believable."

Carlson, who estimates he's "right around the 30 mark" in the number of women he's slept with, said he once fibbed and told a girlfriend he'd slept with 20 so she wouldn't have a bad impression of him.

"I knocked off 33 percent," laughed Carlson of Lakeview. Though it's not a universally popular ritual, sex therapist Ian Kerner said couples should honestly discuss their sexual histories as soon as their relationship begins to turn physical, for health reasons and as part of the "deepening of the relationship." But it's not necessary to talk in specific numbers, he said.

"I would never frame it in, 'How many people have you slept with.' Instead, I would say, 'Tell me about your relationship past,'" said Kerner, author of "Date Scene Investigation."
Usually when partners ask to count conquests, they're less interested in a number and more keen to understand how they compare with former flames, Kerner said.

"It's wanting security, wanting to know that I have an understanding of your past, but I'm No. 1 in your life," he said.

Comparing numbers of sexual partners can breed insecurity, Kerner said, especially when the numbers are vastly different. Kerner said he's seen men break up with women because they've had too many lovers and women dump men for being virgins.

But determining what's too few and too many is murky territory, especially today when 95 percent of Americans have had premarital sex, according to a recent study by New York-based think tank the Guttmacher Institute, and casual sex is the norm, Kerner said.

"You can get through college and have had 50 sexual partners," he said. "We're living in an age without the same moral stigmas."

To some, there is such a thing as too many.

Matt Pyles, 27, recently visiting Chicago from Houston, said he gets "disturbed" when his partner's tally is in the double digits. He worries that the more lovers a woman has had, the more likely she is to cheat.

To others, the more the merrier. Kara Mann, 35, and her boyfriend, Adam Heneghan, 37, say they know better than to ask each other their numbers. They don't even remember their own.

"Sex is fun," said Mann of Lakeview. "Why not have a lot of it?"

Mary Roland, 30, who lives on the South Side, said only one opinion matters when it comes to your number: your own.

"If it's not a problem for you, it won't be a problem in the relationship," she said.