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Yeah, not sure I know anyone that didn't marry in their early 20s with that low a number. That would indeed be rather chaste.
Could just signify some long standing relationships. For the men and women I knew that weren't relationship focused, or had a constant FWB, their numbers tended to be higher.
Good blog post but I have one suggestion. If it's ok for us men to deal with rejection and "toughen up" then why don't women try to approach men if it were that easy. It's very easy to give advice when you do not anticipate on doing the said advice.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Originally Posted by weezerfan84
Could just signify some long standing relationships. For the men and women I knew that weren't relationship focused, or had a constant FWB, their numbers tended to be higher.
I guess, but like the woman I'm seeing now just was out of a 8 year relationship, and I'm sure her number is many multiples of 8, I wouldn't be surprised if it were 8 squared. A woman I dated last year was married from 23-40 or so and I'm certain she has had many times 8. Heck, I'm sure plenty of people in my life have slept with 8 people in a couple of weeks at most, if that. Not me, I'm not smooth or good looking enough, but still.
Yeah, not sure I know anyone that didn't marry in their early 20s with that low a number. That would indeed be rather chaste.
A lot of comments say that in most internet articles about these studies.
Nevertheless, if you search out this information, study after study bears it out - that the median number of partners floats in the high single digits. The latest one I saw from 2009 showed only about 25% of men and 10% of women report their number higher than 15.
These are big studies with thousands of people using good methodology so there's no reason not to believe them.
As for why it might be that way? Who knows? A French study suggested that the samples of women they get don't include prostitutes while men are counting that. Most studies suggest that men inflate and women deflate. Another one found that men are more likely to count a wider variety of sex acts in their "number" while most women only count vaginal and anal penetration.
Another hypothesis I have is that the median and averages are skewed by two extremes - 10-20% that are having a lot of sex with a lot of people, and 20% or so that have 0-2 partners in their lifetimes. The numbers reporting 1 or 2 are greater than those reporting 20+.
If you're in churchy culture - which I was growing up somewhat - I've witnessed them date as little as 3 months then get married because... well they wanted to have sex and their culture was you didn't do it outside of marriage.
My feeling is that it has to do with culture - you tend to gravitate toward people with similar values. I've been with 13 and of those, the majority had numbers in the single digits and almost all wanted an ltr so my m.o. was to jump from relationship to relationship that would last 1-4 years, so only the months in between would the number increase by 2-3.
I'm also an introverted person that doesn't hang out with people a lot so my opportunities are less. Even when I would party - I never really hooked up with people there even though I'm sure some might have done so if I'd really tried.
My feeling is that it has to do with culture - you tend to gravitate toward people with similar values. I've been with 13 and of those, the majority had numbers in the single digits and almost all wanted an ltr so my m.o. was to jump from relationship to relationship that would last 1-3 years, then with a number months in between where the number would increase.
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I think that might be closer to the truth. In college none of my friends were the type to go to parties or bars and hook up with randoms. None of my close friends did that. People dated, whatever, but it was never this non-stop sex party thing.Even now my friends don't do that. I don't know that I know anyone in real life who has ONSs and FWBs. So when Timberline says that he and his friends have partners numbering in the dozens, that's their truth, but it's not mine. It's just who runs in your circles.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Originally Posted by fleetiebelle
I think that might be closer to the truth. In college none of my friends were the type to go to parties or bars and hook up with randoms. None of my close friends did that. People dated, whatever, but it was never this non-stop sex party thing.Even now my friends don't do that. I don't know that I know anyone in real life who has ONSs and FWBs. So when Timberline says that he and his friends have partners numbering in the dozens, that's their truth, but it's not mine. It's just who runs in your circles.
Well I never went to parties and hooked up (I didn't even drink in undergrad), or had more than a handful of ONS in 25 years of having sex. Not my scene at all, personally, and I'm not good looking or smooth enough to pull that off. I think I had sex with maybe 3-4 people by the time I finished undergrad, all of them I dated for a good period of time. Still, in 25 years of dating, even with abundant 2-3 year monogamous relationships, there is going to be some numbers. Even doing as I've done, which is take a year or two off from time to time.
I think though the numbers are definitely deflated. Most people don't discuss their ONS of FWBs with lots of people in their lives, as lots of people are judgmental. Like, if you asked people if they smoke weed, few people (At least as adults) admit it, yet a large percentage do. You don't share things with friends, even good friends, that you think they might judge harshly or change their image of you. This is especially true with my female friends. They talk to me about their dating/sex lives and many come right out and say they could never tell their girlfriends about it as they think they would be viewed as a sl*t by their friends while I'm not judgmental and even encouraging.
Another hypothesis I have is that extremes are skewing the averages.
The "normal" plurality may have an average of 20.
But you have 15% or so who are having A LOT of sex with A LOT of partners, like 50-100.
Then you have greater than 20% that report 0-2. Statistically there are more people being completely monogamous than people playing the field. 96% report having had sex over age 21. I was surprised, however, at the high number of people only reporting 1 or 2.
It gives you that ~8 result.
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