I was kind of wondering about this, too. I was thinking - when did she ever say how many partners she had?
FTR, I have not had a lot of partners by any standards and I agree that asking is just silly. It gets you nowhere.
I think that they do have an obligation to share their past with you. Your past experiences make you the person you are today, after all, and I wouldn’t want to be with a partner who wanted to hide part of their life from me. A good relationship requires complete honesty and openness.
Having lots of sex is not the issue with me: it’s how the person got the sex. Yes, it’s a more free world than it used to be, but there’s not a huge number of people out there who opt for a no-committment-fun-fuck. A lot of people still hold sex to be something special that they want to share only if there’s an emotional involvement. I would be concerned that the heavily experienced person was a manipulator, or worse, someone who would lie to get what they wanted. (i.e telling the person whose pants they want in that they love them when they don’t.)
In other words, the problem isn’t if it was clear that all parties concerned knew that it was only a fun-fuck, but I would be concerned that the guy was a “playa.” Sure, people can always reform, but despite what Hollywood teaches us, they don’t meet their “true love” and reform overnight.
On the other hand, I have to admit that I can’t entirely rid myself of the “bowling shoes” analogy. I’ll wear shoes handed down to me from a friend, because I know that few people have worn them, but I’m a bit squicked by the notion of bowling shoes which have had thousands of strangers wearing them. Yeah, they’re sprayed with disinfectant, but eww. And, as Cher said in Clueless, those only go on my* feet.*
*Complete * honesty and openness is highly overrated. People *say * they want it, but somehow I’ve never seen anyone look happy to actually *get * it.
Hey, you know what people like that do when you ask them a question? They lie.
I’m amused that people seem to think that asking these sorts of questions is a good way of building trust, or even obtaining useful information. You know what’s helpful in building trust? Actually getting to know someone before you have sex with them. If you do that, none of the questions in the OP matter.
The thing is, if you get to know them, you’d already know whether they were the type to get involved in that type of manipulative relationship. What, you think they’re going to 'fess it up to you? No, those kinds you always have to infer.
Or on preview, what DianaG said.
I have been. I know my husband’s complete sexual history, and he knows mine. Neither of us suffer from needless jealousy over it. What’s the point of getting all worked up about something that happened before your partner met you? It’s sort of childish, I think.
Maybe some people do. I wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with anyone who couldn’t be honest with me. That’s a dealbreaker.
Again, I think that someone who has to hide their history is not a good prospect for a long-term relationship. Revealing these things is part of the process of getting to know someone. Sexual history can tell you a LOT about a person-- do they have the same values as you? Are they willing to lie to get what they want? Do they care about honesty and openness?
Maybe I’m weird, but I want to know everything about the person I love and with whom I’m sharing my life. Sexual history is only a part of that, but it’s an important part. (If people are willing to lie about it, and go to lengths to hide it, it has to be important, doesn’t it?)
I tell you with a straight face, I bet I can find you a 25 year old with 40+ sexual partners who takes sex more seriously than another 25 year old with 3 sexual partners. The catch is, the second person may WANT more partners and not be able to GET them.
If you’re talking about someone who’s had three partners and likes it that way, then I’ll concede that the two people more than likely think about sex differently. I think you’ve got the right idea by wanting to filter out people who view sex by standards that aren’t close to yours-- but I think actual number of partners isn’t as good a filter as potential or desired number.
Corrvin
Just out of curiousity: do you draw any distinction at all between the OP’s scenario (just starting a romantic relationship) and a commited relationship, particularly in marriage?
As Lissa stated, a person’s sexual past is a part of who they are today (although I don’t think I’d go so far as to say it’s an obligation to share that information). I can’t imagine my wife and I avoiding this topic any more than we would any other part of our past. It’s not the sort of information we would ever use against one another, but we wouldn’t hide it or pretend like it didn’t exist, either.
I’m pretty much in agreement with DianaG here, but there is one vague thought that falls outside the boundaries of the specific question. If the prospective partner had had a dozen different partners a year for the past fifteen or twenty years, that would give me pause to wonder exactly how committed she was to this particular relationship, and establishing the level of commitment is something that I would want taken care of before we even got to the impertinent questions in the OP. So, if I were in a relationship where I felt the need to ask those questions, it’s because I have trust issues with the other person, and the relationship probably isn’t going to last long enough to lead to sex anyway…
Male here, lots of prior sex partners and I say also, no it doesn’t matter and it really doesn’t accomplish anything to talk about it a lot.
I have been regularly tested for STD’s (mostly for my own safety because I did get around a good bit) and would never knowingly expose someone to disease. As a gay male HPV isn’t really a major concern.
You may not care for one night things or casual sex, but some of us like it or did in our single days. I will tell you that when I was 25 I had far more than 40 sexual partners. And yes, I take sex very seriously. I follow the thought that sex can be either physical or emotional. When I’m single and just want someone it’s a purely phyiscal thing, but when I’m in a relationship it is a sincere expression of my love for that person.
It should be clear already, but to answer the OP…the number of people one has had sex with does not matter in the slightest to me as far as considering them as long term relationship material. And I’m very glad that my BF of 5 years feels the same.
No, the OP was about what we are all “judgey” about, and saying you prefer people that have fewer partners–that you kinda find fewer partners to be hot–seems pretty reasonable to me. I mean, considering the stuff people on this board have admitted they find hot, “fewer partners than average” isn’t even on the charts for “quirky”. That said, I am uncomfortable with threemae’s attempt to suggest that his preference is the result of “evolutionary psychology”, which seems to me to be a way to suggest that that preference is universal and that other guys are lying if they deny this preference, or it appears to be a way to justify something that doesn’t need to be justified. What you like is what you like, and it doesn’t matter why, and it doesn’t mean other people have the same likes.
I am torn on this issue–on one hand, I think that there is precious little joy in this world, and when the opportunity arises, people shouldn’t hesitate. On the other hand, I do like that my husband and my own sexual experiences were not vast before we met–that there are things that only the two of us have shared. It wouldn’t have been a deal breaker, or anything close to it, but I still really like it.
I do. I’m not condoning keeping secrets from your long-term partner (although I also don’t feel that full detailed disclosure is necessary, or even desirable). I’m merely pointing out the questions in the OP aren’t exactly a great way to enhance trust *or * obtain information.
If you know so little about this person that you genuinely have not even an inkling of how sexually active they’ve been, then you certainly don’t know them well enough to discern the truth of their answers.
I also think the info is just not that important. Let’s say that you’ve been with someone for a year, and the relationship is a successful and happy one. Are you prepared to leave that person if you find out that they were more sexually active prior to meeting you than you thought (assuming they didn’t actually lie about it)? Would you actually stop loving someone because before they met you, they had sex with more people than you think is appropriate? Because IMO, if you would, then that kind of pettyness is something YOU should probably disclose prior to entering into a relationship.
*Universal, generic “you” aimed at no one in this thread.
Now that’s a real shame. Once you’ve done something 1,000 times, you really should be getting pretty good at it, no?
Just to flip the OP a bit - I would actually be a bit squicked out to be with someone who had very few partners. I’ve been down that road before, and frankly, I kind of think it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
I’m not really sure I can process this question in numbers. (I also can’t answer it in terms of ‘agreeing to be monogamous’.)
I know not only my entire sexual history, but most of the relevant sexual history of the partners I’ve had (back to loss of virginity for relevant parties in most cases), and can rattle it off; when my boyfriend and I were negotiating the beginning of our sexual relationship, I did so, and so did he. I suspect that of my friends I’m one of the more variety-experienced people in the group, but my social subculture is one in which sexual activity started post-teenaged years, long-term relationships are the norm, partners are not seen as easy to come by, and while most people are poly-aware and to some extent friendly, most are also monogamous. (In other words, I hang out with geeks.)
While I have never had sex outside of a committed and intended long-term relationship (tried to negotiate a friends-with-benefits once, and we fell deeply in love before we managed to get as far as the benefits), I don’t have objections to that sort of relationship per se. I would be more comfortable with f-w-b type relationships than sex-with-strangers kinds, because that strikes me as being compatible with my own attitudes towards sex. I would be extremely careful dealing with someone whose relationships appeared to have no staying power, especially their serious relationships.
Dealbreakers would be someone whose sexuality appeared to be predatory, exploitative, or not consensual on the parts of all involved parties. At this point, I suspect also that I would not be willing to get sexually involved with someone who was not pretty much into the same stuff I am; I’ve been both the ‘too weird to deal with’ and the ‘wow, that’s … peculiar … and sort of more than I want to deal with’ person, and I’m tired.
I was actually taken aback that I had more past partners than my boyfriend when we exchanged information. (I’ve got some sex-related damage and a low libido; he’s utterly, gorgeously comfortable in his sexuality, has a high libido, and describes himself as “easy”.) His response was something like, “Oh, sure, I’m easy, but I have very high standards.” (He was also committed to a monogamous relationship for a number of years, and I wasn’t.)
I agree with DianaG that exchanging numbers of partners is not an effective way to establish trust or monogomy or STD-less-ness. If I feel that someone has asked me that question in an effort to decide whether I’m worth dating/screwing, I decline to answer (and am usually less interested in dating/screwing him).
But, in my last relationship numbers did come up in the course of us talking openly about sex – things we’d each tried and liked, tried and not liked, not tried but wanted to someday, etc. I was much more experienced than him, and trading numbers was the starting point for that conversation. So I would never expect numbers to come up when I’m still deciding whether to sleep with someone, but once a relationship is established I don’t mind talking about it.
1. How high does the number of previous partners have to get before you are taken aback?
Probably in the several-hundreds, depending on the age of the guy in question.
2. How high does the number have to get before you call things off?
No such thing.
3. What experiences might a person have that would be a deal-breaker?
No such thing.
4. What makes the answer to #s 2 & 3 a deal-breaker for you?
N/A
5. If there is no deal-breaker for you, why not?
Why would there be?
6. Have you ever been in the reverse situation–that is, had a partner be taken aback or break things off because you had too much experience?
At most I’d say that one or two guys have seemed kind of intimidated, but just at first. There’s absolutely no reason for someone with little experience to feel intimidated by someone with a lot more experience, and I always make that very clear. When I’m with someone, the only experience that matters is what I’ve done with him – if he doesn’t feel the same way, we’re probably not a good match.
If anyone has been taken aback or broken up with me because of my history, I’m not aware of it.
Not if it’s 1,000 separate women. 
In fact, the lack of skillz could be exactly why the number is so high: it might be easy to get a woman to sleep with you once, but if you’re not that good she probably won’t sleep with you again. I’m almost never interested in the hottie at the bar who has all of the women hanging around him: good looks != good in bed, and I have a pet theory that the best-looking guy in the bar will be the worst one in the sack.*
*The corollary, however, is not true: the ugliest guy in the bar will not be the best one in bed, because you do have to be able to get a woman to sleep with you at least that one time…
Yes, but you told me that AFTER a certain someone was dismayed to learn that I couldn’t give her a precise number, closer to a hundred than fifty.
Another guy here with a not entirely insignificant history, and I echo those who say that the raw number of sexual partners really doesn’t matter.
What does matter is how he or she acted in previous relationships. If you’re lying in bed listening to your partner tell you how she slept with guys behind her first boyfriend’s back and then admits to manipulating him to buy her stuff, that’s important! I mean, if a woman has 50 partners, but they were all flings, and no one was getting used or heartbroken, I’d rather try a monogamous relationship with her than with the girl who has five sexual partners, four of whom she screwed to get back at the first one.
By the way, reading the responses, I have a question of my own. Do partners just tell you the number at some point? In over half my relationships, we’d be lying there in bed, and she’d just start talking about numbers and histories and stuff. I’ve never had to ask the numbers question (and indeed, I never would ask the question for the simple reason that it’s tacky and doesn’t interest me), and I’m wondering if you’ve experienced the same thing.
Linty, I’ve never had a man bring it up, and I make it a policy not to myself. I usually have a general feel for the broad category of experience, but I don’t really care. If I had a man push me for numbers, I would feel very uneasy. It’s none of his business, and none of mine either, as long as we’re both healthy. Now girlfriends, on the other hand… we do sometimes compare numbers among ourselves.
I completely agree with you about the previous behavior though. I’ve found that that’s something that you don’t have to come right out and ask; if you listen, a person will tell you how they are.
Which is why I refuse to date any woman under 40 years old–she can’t have had enough experience at that tender age to have a clue what’s she’s doing in bed.
Also, women under 40 tend to run away screaming like their hair’s on fire when I ask them out.
I would disagree with that. A good relationship requires honesty and openness in some areas, but in other areas, the old rule “less history, more mystery” applies. Giving a particular count of your past sex partners is not very mysterious. What does that tell the person about who you are today anyway? Are you going to use numerology to evaluate it?
I think getting to know them as a person is a lot more important than gathering statistics on their past. I also frankly am cynical enough to recognize that most people really wouldn’t be happy if they knew what everyone else thought of them all the time. There’s a time and a place for honesty and openness.
Exactly. That’s why there’s no point in asking in the first place.
That’s a good point; having a conversation like that with someone you don’t know all that well is a bit different from that sort of thing gradually coming out during the course of a long term relationship.
I don’t want any “mystery.” That’s for soap operas and romance novels.
In real life, I want to know everything about my partner. Why? Because he’s the most fascinating person in the world to me, and I want to know about his experiences, both good and bad. They shaped him into the person he is today, taught him lessons and shaped his emotional growth.
I know nothing of numerology, by the way.
And how well are you getting to know a person if they’re omitting a big part of their life? Sex is not insignificant trivia. It tells me about the kind of people they choose to spend time with, and why.
In a relationship with good communication, you shouldn’t have to ask. It should be something that’s gradually shared as you get to know the person and tell them about your life. I don’t believe I ever sat Hubby down and said, “How many people have you fucked?” It was something that we discussed as we were getting to know one another and came out in various contexts.