I don’t want to stop having sex, but it’s lowering my sense of self-worth.
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Help me Hera,
I’m really struggling with the idea of body count. I’m a 20-year-old woman who loves sex and does it safely and responsibly, but I can’t help the feeling that it has in some way made me “tainted goods” and will make it hard for me to find/pursue a serious romantic connection when I find or want that.
It frustrates me because I think of myself as a feminist, and absolutely don’t believe that how many partners someone has had has any effect on who they are. But I still can’t shake that creeping feeling of shame. It’s lowering my sense of self-worth, and I don’t like it!!! I don’t want to stop having sex (it’s too much fun), but I also don’t know how to continue with all this anxiety.
Body Countess
Dear Body Countess,
As far as I’m concerned, the term “body count” should be strictly reserved for train derailments or other mass casualty events. It has no place in the modern bedroom.
The older I get (37), the more I have to check my advice to make sure it’s applicable to the younger generation. It does anecdotally seem like Gen Z is a little more conservative when it comes to sex. But perhaps it only seems that way, because the people who are most vehemently outspoken against sleeping around happen to be resentful virgins with wifi, who take up a disproportionate amount of the digital whinging space.
There are two kinds of people who care about “body counts.” The first type are people with strong feelings or moral convictions about intimacy, who don’t engage in casual sex and are looking for a partner with compatible values. This is fine. If people want to cross their knees for Jesus, that’s their own business.
Then there are hypocrites with raging insecurity complexes, who want to fuck, but also view women’s sexuality as a depreciating asset. Some of these hypocrites have low “body counts” – not out of any moral conviction, but merely a lack of opportunity. These are not men you should aspire to be in a relationship with. Men have a right to care, just as you have a right not to give a shit.
Yes, there’s a difference between someone who is sleeping with anyone and everyone to fill an emotional void and someone who is simply having fun. But there’s no point reducing this sort of complex psychological calculation to a banal maths equation.
I’m not saying that anyone who feels insecure about their partner’s sexual history is automatically a loser. It’s human to feel a little intimidated by someone’s past, whether that’s emotional or sexual or whatever. Your first relationships are often a steep learning curve, and learning how to deal with jealousy and anxiety is a natural part of that. But pretending your insecurity is a serious moral position is transparently immature.
The good news is that your “body count” is nobody’s business and you don’t have to tell anyone your number, unless you’re in a serious relationship. People have a right to know medically relevant details, like whether you’ve been tested for STDs or are having unprotected sex. But they don’t have the right to leaf through your little black book, unless you are in a relationship with a shared expectation of transparency. Even then, sometimes people prefer not to know an exact figure. You don’t even have to know the exact figure yourself. Stop keeping track if it makes you feel better.
If you see a future with someone, you should feel comfortable being honest with them, not just because you owe them the truth, but because you should ideally have a deep curiosity about each other’s lives, genital warts and all. I actually think that someone’s ability to deal with your sexual past is a good litmus test for whether they’re emotionally mature enough to be in an adult relationship.
Having said that, it’s much easier to agree with the ideological principles of what I’m saying than to get rid of internalised shame. If it’s causing you anguish and anxiety, it may be worth taking a break while you sit with some of those feelings. Not because you’re doing anything wrong. But because sex should be about pleasure, not shame, (unless of course the shame is part of the pleasure). If you want to keep sleeping around, but can’t stop obsessing over your number, you can always try to cook up some kind of friends with benefits arrangement with one or more of your past partners. Personally, I don’t see how sleeping with one person you don’t love 50 times is any better than sleeping with 50 people you don’t love once, but if a lazy mathematical workaround leaves you feeling less anxious, maybe that’s a good temporary solution.
I do think this precise issue is more of a problem when you’re young, when the experience gap is a little more numerically skewed in women’s favour. People in their 20s care a lot more about this kind of issue than people in their 30s, and anyone still seething over their partner’s sexual history in their 40s is usually a court-certified loser.
Sleeping around isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not a good thing either. It’s morally neutral, and therefore worth regularly examining how you’re feeling and whether your choices feel healthy or harmful. But there’s no shame in exploring the pleasure and freedom inherent in having corporeal form.
The kind of person you should aspire to fall in love with shouldn’t see you as a set of disembodied statistics to torment themselves with. They will see you as a whole person and seek to understand your past in the full context of your life, with curiosity, not judgment, and hopefully a robust sense of humour.
Have fun with your body – you only get one. Don’t dull your pleasure to conform to a hypothetical partner’s insecurity. Live up to your own standards, whatever those are. And please remember to get regular STD checks.
