There are a few of my 12-ish that I’d eliminate because it was just stupid, “meh” sex.
I can’t change the past, but the one I would have from now until the end of my days is the one I have currently. But, alas, that ain’t gonna happen.
Because of this relationship, I now have the gold standard for the way the sexual, emotional and spiritual should come together. But I wonder if I’d have figured this out if I didn’t have those other experiences to compare it with.
There are several women I seriously wish I had gotten closer to.
One is my greatest regret: I never quite got up the nerve to ask her for a date and we were already friends, and later I found that we were far more compatible than I ever dreamed, even religiously (and that’s almost unknown for us pagans)). I met her on the subway about a year ago and she is still beautiful and still One Of The Good Ones. Her daughter is now in high school.
Another, well, we struggled, and never got past the struggle. Which is a shame, because she is cool, smart, gorgeous, an activist and writer, and we maybe could have actually created something together.
Another: Hungarian, alternative builder, determined and gutsy student. We met at a workshop for solar-powered houses, but she was with someone at the time, and somehow we never crossed paths again. I found out later that she actually liked me, so if she’d been single, I might have had a chance. :smack:
And there have been others: interesting and passionate women met online, who turned out to be in other countries or not interested in long-distance relationship. Quite understandable, really; ultimately, I want a close and passionate relationship as well.
Wow. Well said.
I also just say one. I’m don’t depend on a number as the benchmark for being a man, I’d just be nice to come home to something to after shitty day at work.
More. I believe I’d be open to taking any applications. 
Oh, just one. But one that made the rest “not count”, if you know what I mean!
My friends say I’m a closet romantic. goes back into her closet
On British TV, there was a clip of the Poet Laureate John Betjeman (the centenary of whose birth it is this week) at the end of his life, being taken for a stroll on some clifftops in his wheelchair. “Do you have any regrets, John? Is there anything you wish you’d done more of during your time?”
“Yes,” replied the man of letters, gazing wistfully out to sea. “I wish I’d had had a lot more sex.”
Though hopefully this isn’t the end of my life, I am married and monogamous, and so I agree with Mr Betjeman. There are four or five (maybe more) opportunities that I passed up for stupid reasons - usually insecurity - with women I was in total lust with, and I totally regret not going for it at the time.
When come back, bring pie.
Ontopic: I’ve had 6. Double that would have been nice, but not anymore. My wife’s libido hit low earth orbit a few months back and after a 8 year drought, I’m pretty damn happy.
For me the number would be the same but I’d like to sub out some of the women I did have sex with for some of the women I didn’t.
Wouldn’t life be interesting if one could do “selective edits” with perfect 20/20 hindsight?
In an extraordinary piece of synchronicity, just after I posted this I went for a walk and turned on my radio, only to hear John Betjeman say “I didn’t have enough sex”. So there’s the real quote. Not quite spooky, since it’s his centenary week, but still, of all the things that could have been on the radio about him…
Well, I’ve slept with 28 guys. Three of them I regret – the first because he was terrible, the second was one of those I-slept-with-him-to-shut-him-up situations, and the third I found out later was married. On the other hand, I can easily think of three guys I wish I had slpet with but didn’t for one reason or another…
So, I’m calling it a wash – I’m happy with the overall number, but three of the players would change.
Well before I got married I had this thing about Meg Ryan.
Sooooo I’d sorta give her one then cast her aside like a sodden glove while waiting for my beloved to hove into view
:eek: That works?!
[shaft of light shines down from the heavens on BrainGlutton, choir of angels sings “Alleluia!”]
I just wish I could have found my wife Cyn a long long time ago.
I was sexually abused as a kid, and as a result, started having consensual sex, young (at 14), a lot. My opinion was, hey, if I’m gonna have to have sex anyway, I might as well do it because I want to.
I understand how the 14-year-old me could have thought that, but, from an adult perspective, it was dumb. I’ve been in love three times (counting my husband), and wouldn’t have missed any of the lovemaking with them. But, in hindsight, I sure could have skipped all the casual crap. I don’t know the number of guys I’ve been with, but dozens would sum it up. So, yeah, reduce that number to four, and that’d be right.
I would add a few more, maybe 5-10. I happened to get together with the love of my life when I was 17 and a virgin, and I would never want to go back on that, I would have liked to have some wider experience first.
Remove a few that were bad or the situation became bad after, add in a few that I really should have gone after…probably close to what I’m actually at but maybe there’d be a few more on my number.
Well, let’s see … there were three women with whom I actually could have had sex in the year before I met my wife. There was the dentist’s hot wife who just wanted a young stud (the summer night was warm, the park was empty, the picnic table was secluded and agailable); the coed who offered herself to me because I let her stay at my apartment so she wouldn’t have to drive home on icy roads, and the barrell racer who’d just broken up with her calf-roping boyfriend. At the time, I had no idea why I didn’t fuck any of them. I just didn’t – all were beautiful women, all were perfectly willing, but there was just something not right about each case. Besides, I thought there would be hundreds of other women. There weren’t – there was only one, and I married her. I don’t have any regrets, though, so I guess they don’t actually qualify as the ones I with I’d had.
After some simple math, I come up with approximately 10,310. I’m not picky about whom.
[hijack]
From an adult perspective, its not dumb. Lots of adult rape victims do the same thing. It does two things - it lets you control your own body and simulateously devalues what was taken from you (“you think sex with me is so special - it isn’t, I’ll give it away.”) I learned to look at the casual sex I had after my rape/abuse as part of the healing process. And I don’t regret any of them because they helped me become more whole after that.
I regret two - the rape/abuse guy, because I didn’t do what I should have done to get out…but at the same time, I’m long over blaming myself, and a one night stand that I thought was more meaningful and he - apparently - didn’t. I regret I misread it (and the sex was sort of lousy too.)
I have been with just one woman in my life, who I have now been married to for 5 years. While I don’t regret marrying her when I did, I do find myself wishing that I’d had a wider range of partners before being with her. Not that this was ever likely to have happened - it’s ironic that only after getting married did my social skills and appearance improve to the point that other women became interested in me.
I don’t know what a good number would be - half a dozen, a dozen, 20? It just bothers me on some base level that everyone else seems to have had a lot more and better sex than I have. (Although it also bothers me that it bothers me, but that’s a whole different issue.)