How many is to many?

cosmicsunshine

New member
i was at a party recently,it was a mix of women with different backgrounds. It was one of those sextoy parties, one of the games is to put a number to how many partners you've had in your life. there are awards for the prude and the whore.

how many partners is to many, it didnt feel great taking the whore award even if it was an amazing "bullet" are we still living in a world where the number of partners matters?
 
Hell if I know. I know I have been with more people than both of my current partners put together. Shrug.

I think people put too much attention on sex and not enough on life.
 
unfortunately yes the 'number' does seem to still be important in relationships. Mine is significantly lower than all of my partners yet that isn't an issue for me.

What annoys me is the disparity between how high numbers are viewed between men and women. women tend to find my low number admirable, while men seem astounded that despite my open relationship (which i dont hide) it is so low.

To me the number doesnt matter as much as who is in that number. mine includes people i have a rapport with, and only two one-nighters.
 
To some people it does seem to matter - I have never been able to figure out why. And if you think even briefly about 'the number' it quickly becomes clear it doesn't really tell someone anything useful to know about someone's sexuality. It doesn't indicate if they like sex, why they have sex, what their limits are, what they like.

That said I am curious about people's numbers. I often find it is a conversation starter that can lead to the more interesting stuff. Of course, I don't start with this question if I don't know someone and even if I know them well it is usually easy to figure out if sex is something they feel comfortable discussing.

Interesting question OP! I wonder if there is a poly version of this? How many partners (however one defines partner) is too many? And obviously the answer is very individual.
 
VERY individual and circumstantial I think too.

Like, right now, I have two partners-both men. As I am bi, I REALLY miss having a woman lover and long for that-someday.
But, right now, I honestly don't have time for another lover. So, two is my limit.

But, hopefully someday there will be more, because I hate to think I'll never again have the opportunity to make love to a woman with my heart, soul and body.
 
Interesting question OP! I wonder if there is a poly version of this? How many partners (however one defines partner) is too many? And obviously the answer is very individual.


very much so .. i had 6 once, it was wonderful and crazy all at the same time. currently i have 3, and it still proves to be the most challenging and beautiful thing in my life.
 
I recently tried to make a specific list (who, when, what sex acts, etc) and I remember feeling bad and relieved at the same time. Bad at some of my poor choices when I was younger (a bunch of one-night stand, some unprotected sex), relieved that I had less partners than I thought I did.

But it really doesn't mean that much. If you take all the partners I had before Raga (and since Raga, they've only been Sean, so that's all the guys I've had sex with so far minus two), and add up all the times I've had sex, then my first month with Raga (first month of sexual activity, that is), has it beaten several times over. Like, a lot of times over. Most of the others I had sex with once. One of them I had intercourse with twice, and a few I had other sex activities with more than once.

But in the end, I had much, much less sex with all of these people combined than I did when I was with Raga, or now that I'm with Sean. So the number of partners is definitely not proportional to the amount of sex.

It seems weird to me that people might say I was a "slut" back then, but then "settled down" when in actuality I barely ever had sex when I had one-night stands, in comparison.

I will say though that knowing a bunch of partners was helpful to me. I had less expectations about all guys being one way or another, I expected individuality by the time I had my first serious relationship. I also had a better idea of what I liked and what I wanted.
 
Such a loaded question. I have no idea, I never kept track, really. I know it's very very high due to past stuff I did, and when I tried to make a guess because the at the time boyfriend wanted to know, he dumped me the next day because he thought it was "too much".
Now I don't even answer with a guess, I just say "I don't know".


As for partners, I'm currently seeing 3, plus some casual dates here and there, and it's getting to the limit in terms of time to dedicate to each and to myself. The good thing is that 2 of the 3 have other relationships as well, so they also don't have too much time and it balances out ok. I can't imagine adding another partner, although I'd be open to the possibility if it happens.
 
I tend to be the odd one out on the lower scale when this question is raised. And people are astonished to hear how few there have been in my life. I just say "Well, that's all I needed, I was always satisfied and didn't miss a thing up to now." and that settles it. I don't care honestly as long as they aren't involved with me intimately, but a really high number would put a questionmark on my face. Maybe because my own needs have been so different from those who seem to collect partners in a way and I can't even remotely imagine how one can have over 80 or 100 partners at my age as I don't even need my second hand to count my score ^.^

But I guess, if I take the frequency I have had in my relationships up to now and put that into a number with random partners, well sure, it is possible to reach the higher numbers. Wouldn't have had the energy for that. Each time getting to know new people and create those situations ... I am too lazy for it :cool: (And never really had the opportunity, as I have always been in some kind of monogamous relationship till last year ;))
 
Maybe because my own needs have been so different from those who seem to collect partners in a way and I can't even remotely imagine how one can have over 80 or 100 partners at my age as I don't even need my second hand to count my score ^.^

Well, I never looked at it like I was "collecting partners," but I recall back in the mid-'90s trying to count all the men I'd been with since I first started having sex, and it was impossible because it was definitely over 100 and a lot of it was hard to remember. I guess I just started young (14), and that was the 1970s after all - sex was just part of getting to know someone and I have always been the type to start with sex first before developing a relationship. So, by 1995, I was 35, which is over 20 years of having sex as a single person. I mean, it isn't that difficult to fathom if you have several short-term relationships per year and a period or two of going to bars and having one-night stands in between. That could easily be 10 sex partners per year, so over 20 years could be 200. But in my younger years, I had mostly long-term relationships, so maybe it wasn't quite that high - but there were also years where I had more one-night stands than ongoing relationships, and then a year here and there with no sex at all, so who knows. Really, I don't care about this stuff, so I never kept track and, after a certain age, I have found that people stop asking this question (LOL). Then I was monogamous with my husband for over ten years, and since my separation in middle of 2010 I have had sex with... let's see... seven guys so far (but I feel like I'm forgetting one).

To the OP, I probably would've won the whore award at that party, but I wish they would have called it the Slut Award. I have a sensitivity to the word "whore," but don't mind "slut" as much.
 
Last edited:
I'm probably in the same boat as nycindie with winning the award. I'm not proud of my past but after some sexual assualts I coped poorly by sleeping with someone new almost daily for about 5 or 6 months trying to fill like I took my own sexual power back.

If I ignore those aspects all of my sexual partners have either been in relationships or FWB situations.

As far as romantic partners I feel saturated. I don't want or desire any others because not do I have three relationships between 4 people, I'm still working on fostering a reconnect between my metamour and I because before things exploded between us that was on it's way to being a fairly healthy relationship as well. also my current sexual partners only involve my romantic partners.
 
I too like "slut" better than "whore", mostly because of the money issue. I feel "whore" is more sex-negative because it implies that you didn't have the sex because you wanted to, but to get something out of it. I might be reading too much into it.
Both can definitely be used to objectify and insult, which isn't cool.
 
My number is different depending on what the person asking the questions means by "sex". It can be quite low, if we're only talking PiV/PiA sex, or well into the double digits if the question includes other activities.

I wish that getting something for having sex didn't have the negative feel to it. People get paid to do a lot of things- teach, clean, cook, build...why is it so bad to get paid to have sex? Manipulation to get sex or to get payment would be bad, but a business transaction of buying/selling a service? How is that so different from paying my massage therapist? I actually prefer "whore" over "slut", in general, because to me "slut" implies that one is not using any sort of criteria to select partners, but just screwing anyone possible.
 
i think number only matters if ur the type to sleep with alot of strangers & without protection, then naturally it matters for obvious reasons. but how many ppl are honestly going to admit they have gone in the raw more usual than not?
 
As a job, I don't have anything against prostitution. My problem with the idea that a woman who has a lot of sex is a whore is that I think it's pretty sexist. It seems to imply that a woman cannot possibly enjoy sex for sex's sake, that she's doing it only for the pleasure of her partners, and that what she gets out of it HAS to be money, because it can't possibly be sexual pleasure. I find that attitude very sex negative.
At least a slut is someone who has sex because she wants to, even if it's apparently a bad thing to have sexual appetite when you're female. That's why I think it's preferable.

I know that in reality, someone who has sex for money can very well be doing it because they want to, have made the decision to, etc, and that it can be very sex positive and healthy, and that as you said it's a service like any other. That's not my problem. My problem is the implication that if you are female and had more than X partner, then obviously you weren't having sex with them for the sex or out of love, but because you wanted to manipulate them with sex to get something else that you wanted.
 
For me, it's not about the quantity but the quality. :D
 
My number is different depending on what the person asking the questions means by "sex". It can be quite low, if we're only talking PiV/PiA sex, or well into the double digits if the question includes other activities.

LOL! That messes up the whole process. :)
My sister and I tried to figure this one out when we were in our early 20's and gave up. We simply couldn't decide what counted and what didn't!

I mean seriously, where exactly is the line of what is or isn't sex?

I always assume in the numbers game that they are talking about intercourse. But, who the heck knows these days. :p
 
There is no number that is too high or too low really. That's a personal thing that no one can answer. Though, when my too many comes into play for me is when you have sex with people you don't care about. My body I feel is my temple and I want to share it with those I have/do love/d. I feel I would cheat myself otherwise.

Of course, I know some don't see it that way either. This is just my personal thought on the matter.
 
Back
Top