No I’m not talking about your phone number. I’m talking about your body count, kill count, notch number or simply put: your number of sexual partners. Regardless of how high or how low, it doesn’t actually matter. The stigma around having a high or low number really comes down to people passing judgment, your own safety and the relationship between you and your current partner.
Judgment
This is more for girls than guys. No one wants to be known as easy, or as a slut or as a whore but these words are thrown at girls every single day. Not just by guys but by other girls because their promiscuity isn’t seen as classy or respectable. There are three things that the human mind craves: food, sleep, water and sex. You wouldn’t fault someone for eating, sleeping or drinking more or less water than you do. Their mind and body require a different amount than yours does. But when it comes to sex, having comparatively more partners or less partners makes you seem like an easy conquest or an impenetrable fortress. As long as you can respect your own number, almost everyone else’s opinion on it does not matter.
Safety
Whenever you go to have a physical, the doctor always asks the dreaded question “are you sexual active?” Often times they will follow up this question with “do you use protection?” That second question is the key. Using protection is a very big deal, don’t let anyone say otherwise. You wouldn’t pull something out of the oven without gloves and you wouldn’t play full contact hockey without pads and a helmet. That being said you shouldn’t be having recreational sex without some form of protection. Your sex life is your own responsibility and no one else’s. Continuously having unprotected sex is like driving with a suspended license, it’s only a matter of time before things go bad. As long as you’re being safe, no one can fault you.
Your Partner
This person is the only other person besides you and your doctor that is allowed to have some sort of opinion on how many people you’ve interacted with. If that number is very low or even zero, they could feel honored to be a part your early sexual experiences. Or they could feel the contrary and become uncomfortable with the responsibility of being the first. If your number is relatively high they could be indifferent with the number between you two or they could be uncomfortable with the differences in your levels of sexual experience. It truly could go either way. But outside their opinion, anyone else’s shouldn’t affect how you feel about yourself.
At this point in life we are all adults capable of making most, if not all, decisions for ourselves. Each decision you make will almost always affect you more than anyone else. Having sex is not something to be demonized or stigmatized. If at the end of the day you are happy with who you are and how much sexual experience you’ve garnered at this point in your life, then no one’s words can have any effect on you. Hold your head high, do you and anyone you want to.
