What's Your Number?...Who Fucking Cares?!

Once you have been dating someone for a little while the inevitable question tends to arise - what's your number? This question usually seems to asked whilst in bed so is basically asking, "how many other people have you been in this exact same situation with?"

But why do we care? We have all been guilty of asking that question at some point to a partner, but really - what does it matter? We also all judge the response, whether we are aware of it or not.

I've judged people for the number being too low and too high. Surely if it's too long there's something wrong with him? But if its too high then he's just a slut who sleeps around without thought or care. The strange thing is, is that I don't even know what I would consider to be a "normal" number. What number am I actually expecting for them to come up with? 4? 14? 30? 100? More?? Really why do we ask in the first place? It NEVER ends well.

People tend not to keep track of how many people they have kissed (and really in our generation after Freshers week and Uni in general, I doubt most of us know). So why is the number of how many people you have had sex with seen as so important??

It's almost like we are having to prove our sexual worth to our partner. And, if we are female, that we are experienced but not so much so that we are deemed a 'whore' and therefore fall into non-girlfriend territory.

This doesn't seem to be the case with men, I think when girls ask this question as I said before, are looking for the middle ground. They want to feel 'special' but also don't want to be with a near-virgin (surely if your a virgin in your 20s there's something wrong with you??)

But really what does it matter? Long gone are the days of no sex before marriage. People don't get married in their late teens and early twenties anymore - the peak of sexual discovery. In fact the entire trend of marriage altogether is in decline. So if you aren't hurting anyone (including yourself) where is the problem?

Sex is to be enjoyed. It took us decades to realise this it would seem. Most people now aged 60ish or over who have slept with more than one person would probably feel embarrassed to admit this. But with the pill coming into common use in the UK in the 1970s and the condom widely available, it really is entirely possible to enjoy sex without the dirty business of babies and infections afterwards.

Plus no one tells the truth anyway. There's the golden rule explained in one of the American Pie movies (the second one I think) - guys times their number by three, and girls divide it by three. Naturally. Girls would probably largely fall into 'whore' category if they didn't. We should all just adopt a universal don't ask, don't tell policy. Most of the time we don't like the response and really there are more important things to be worrying about.

For example - I don't know about you but rather than how many girl's he's had in the sack, I think I would rather know if my partner was riddled with aids or had a string of babies lying in his pre-me sex life.