How many sex partners have you had?
That and other questions about your boinking life
India Knight has a two-pager about adolescent sex vs. adult sex. She was prompted to discuss this due to a survey that indicated one-quarter of all British teens say they’ve had sex with an average of three lovers, and 60% said they were drunk at the time:
And so, incrementally, we have got to the stage where young people genuinely seem to believe that having sex is the only benchmark, the only evidence that you’re an okay person, the only proof that you have an appealing personality. Having sex means approval.
Except that, as grown-ups know, it doesn’t. Having sex with three people by the time you’re 14, because you were drunk, and finding all of those lovers unattractive (as 29% of girls said they did), and regretting the whole thing terribly afterwards (50%) isn’t sexy, or “empowering”, or glamorous, or grown-up: it’s just sad.
Before I get too Mary Whitehouse, I must just point out that sexual experimentation is an excellent thing, and that in the majority of cases both women and men should have a broad variety of lovers before they “settle down”.
It was interesting to read what the average number of lovers was for different demographic groups in Great Britain, broken down by gender and ethnic background. I’d like to see more demographics and more questions added, as the ones they asked raised more questions in my mind.
Like age difference. Did those who were in their teens and twenties during the ’sexual revolution’ in the 1960s and 1970s have more sex than folks older or younger? (This would help reassure me that I’m not an aberrant old whore).
And if part of India’s point is to discourage having sex so young, she could have indicated what the poll said about those who remained virgins at 14 (I’m presuming it’s a larger number than that 25%). The pollsters also could have asked how many have had STDs, how many had unwanted pregnancies, how many pregnancies led to failed or successful marriages, how many led to welfare, etc., etc.
So, out of curiousity, how many sex partners have you had? When did you first have sex? What advice would you give to a 14 year old, based on your experience?
Feel free to use a different pseudonym in comments, if you wish. And if you suffer from a peculiar form of heterosexual nymphomania that makes you hot for overweight fifty-something guys, skip the comments and email me directly.
April 2nd, 2005 at 5:22 pm
Average is six sexual partners? Jeez. I’m a very sedate person–at least compared to my friends–and I’ve had, I think, 15. (I’m 40.)
I lost my virginity at 17 to a 22-year-old dancer who rented a room upstairs at my mom’s house. She was very much into the idea of being the mature woman who would make my first time “special.” Actually the whole trip was kind of sordid and depressing. There was no question of either of us being in love,and the sex wasn’t too earth-shaking (though I did come).
Birth control wasn’t necessary; she was having her period at the time, not too heavy.
There was only a little alcohol involved. Despite this, having heard a lot of horror stories I tell my own kids to avoid alcohol till they finish school.
In general I agree with the premise that our sex-crazed consumer culture encourages us to believe that everyone but ourselves is “getting some.”
In a side note, I have an idea that the American diet (coffee, alcohol, tobacco, antibiotic- and hormone-laden meats, etc.) makes sex a smellier, hence less private/concealable, proposition than it might be, say, in Polynesia where the enzyme-rich, fresh fruit-laden diet makes people’s scents more subtle. Because of this, I wonder if the American diet helps tip our culture toward fascism. But I suppose I’m veering a bit far afield. . .
April 2nd, 2005 at 7:49 pm
The comic book writer/artist Dennis Eichorn did a series of comics (Real Sex, Real Smut, etc.) in which he recounts personal adventures where he had lots and lots of sex. He relayed in one of the comics that he often got quizzed about whether his stories were really true or whether he was making up some of them. He replied that, no, he was relaying true stories, that people in the 60s had lots and lots of sex. So no, you’re not at all unusual.
I’d relay my own sex history, but being a child of the 70s, when all the crackdowns occurred, my history is pretty darn unimpressive.
April 2nd, 2005 at 11:20 pm
I was 16 my first time. It was not a good experience. A sixteen-year-old girl is no mental match for a horny and experienced 21-year-old guy. You just drink some and let them do “whatever”. Of course there was no thought on his part that he might try to make it enjoyable for his partner. A couple of years later I was madly in love with a boy only one year older than I, and we had lots of plans for getting married and living h