• Sun. Dec 22nd, 2024
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    Life style

    How many sexual partners is too many sexual partners?

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    Numbers outline our lives. How many bedrooms we’ve got in our properties. How many occasions it took us to move our driving take a look at. How many husbands we’ve had. And so on. One stat apparently means way over another, although: how many individuals we’ve slept with. To many, this will look like a juvenile determine to observe (though loads of grown adults maintain a listing on their telephones). But no matter whether or not it’s one thing you formally monitor, I’ll wager you’re conversant in your quantity. Because for many of us it’s a quantity to which we nonetheless connect a considerable diploma of which means.

    Over the weekend, a girl wrote into “The Midults” recommendation column in The Daily Telegraph expressing concern on the variety of males she’d been with. “I wish I hadn’t slept with so many men,” she wrote. “I am in my mid-forties and have been with a lovely man for many years and I am suddenly haunted by all the bodies I have encountered, particularly as most of the sex was very unsatisfying. I don’t know why I’m suddenly bothered by it.”

    In the response, writers Annabel Rivkin and Emilie McMeekan ascertained that this lady had “partied hard” in her youth. They additionally assured the correspondent that societal expectations shouldn’t lead her to prescribe any quantity of disgrace to her sexual previous. Indeed, they shouldn’t. But it’s typically not that easy, significantly for ladies. “We still have such an archaic view of how we approach this topic,” says Emma-Louise Boynton, founder and host of Sex Talks. “It feels like there’s so much judgement placed on women for having a so-called ‘higher body count’ whereas for men it’s a sense of pride as opposed to something to be ashamed of.”

    This discrepancy is as previous as time. It’s the Madonna-whore advanced to a tee: girls who’ve the audacity to have a way of themselves as sexual beings fall into the latter class, whereas these pretending to not match neatly within the former. It’s one thing we’ve seen play out most clearly on ITV2’s Love Island, the fact TV courting present. Season after season, the present has featured a variation of the identical recreation that may see the female and male contestants guess how many individuals each other had slept with. In textbook style, the lads who’d slept with many individuals have been rewarded with laughs and jeers. The girls with comparable “body counts” have been extremely scrutinised, and sometimes in these phrases (“I can’t believe her body count”) – which served solely to exacerbate the violence of their judgement.

    Too a lot?: ‘How many times a month is considered normal? How many sexual partners is considered normal?’

    (iStock)

    “The feeling of shame associated with sleeping with too many people often stems from arguably outdated societal norms, cultural values, and gender stereotypes,” says psychologist Dr Louise Goddard-Crawley. “Historically, women have been more heavily stigmatised for engaging in multiple sexual relationships compared to men. This double standard perpetuates the notion that women should be sexually modest and reserved, while men are encouraged to pursue sexual conquests. Consequently, women who deviate from these expectations may internalise feelings of shame or judgement, impacting their self-worth and psychological wellbeing.”

    It can take an inordinate quantity of unlearning and self-development work to navigate by means of these emotions of disgrace, which inevitably will have an effect on how we strategy intercourse and courting extra typically. “It’s such an arbitrary thing,” provides Boynton, “because if you’ve been single for most of your twenties, you’re going to have been with more people versus those who’ve been in a relationship. It’s not something that I would ever worry about, because I’ve done a lot of work to disconnect myself from the shame associated between women and sex. I do have a list on my phone but it’s mainly to jolt my memory.”

    You’d assume that in 2024, these could be cultural scripts we’d have lengthy moved away from. But they persist, with individuals fixating on their respective “number” and questioning what it says about them. “As a clinical sexologist working with women, some of the key questions I get from my clients touch on this,” says intercourse coach Marie Morice. “How many times a month is considered ‘normal’? How many sexual partners is considered ‘normal’? This question may mean ‘Am I socially acceptable?’ or ‘conventional’? And my answer to them is always that, when it comes to sex and erotic pleasure, there is no ‘normal’.”

    It’s not simply girls asking these questions, both, and feeling remorse and disgrace after they don’t get the solutions they need. “I think coming of age in the early Noughties – a time when, pop culturally, men were put on a pedestal for having lots of sex with multiple people – messed me up quite a bit,” says Mike*, 39. “I was at a school that was full of toxic masculinity and sleeping around suddenly got me status and validation.” Besides, he provides, it doesn’t precisely result in that many memorable experiences. “I can’t name half the people I’ve slept with,” he explains. “It makes me feel gross and is off-putting for the people with whom I have proper, meaningful relationships.”

    You’d assume that in 2024, these could be cultural scripts we’d have lengthy moved away from. But they persist, with individuals fixating on their respective ‘number’ and questioning what it says about them

    There are ranges to all of this, too. Not solely do some individuals worry that they’ve slept with too many individuals, others worry they’ve slept with too few. “I often worry about how little sexual experience I have,” says Mia*, 31. “Women my age are supposed to be entering their sexual prime. But I was in a relationship for most of my twenties and am still working out who I am, sexually speaking, outside of that. So, if anything, I feel ashamed that I’m not having enough sex with enough people.”

    Perhaps the fixation on such an ostensibly meaningless matter speaks to a wider downside with how we speak and take into consideration intercourse. Surely the truth that we place a lot significance on one thing like this highlights simply how warped societal perceptions round intercourse actually are, and the way little we nonetheless communicate concerning the topic overtly. “We have this perception that everyone else is having much better, more frequent sex than we are,” says Boynton. “It creates an unhealthy comparison culture.”

    In actuality, although, no matter how many sexual partners you’ve got or haven’t had, the difficulty is nobody actually is aware of what different individuals are doing. Comparing with others your intercourse life and sexual historical past is solely ever going to quantity to unhelpful psychological chatter. Building a detrimental narrative like this merely feeds into the underlying insecurity you’re harbouring – both about your self, your physique, or your sexuality. “It just shows how we aren’t speaking vulnerably enough about sex,” provides Boynton. “And until we are, we aren’t going to be able to counter these perceptions.”

    *Names have been modified

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