I Could Never Date A Guy Who’s Slept With A Lot Of Women—In Fact, I Broke Up With One Because Of It

I don’t care that he was a great catch, sexy AF, and really interesting. When he told me the number of sexual partners he’d had, he was relegated from “potential boyfriend” to “not interested in dating you.” It sounds harsh, but here’s why.

  1. That don’t impress me much! I really liked this guy but I’ve always been skeptical about a guy who’s got a huge sexual number and shares it. I never asked him to tell me, yet he was blurting it out so easily. Why? It made me worry that he was a womanizer.
  2. Was it bragging rights? He’d had 50 sexual partners before meeting me. I wondered if he was just slotting this news into our conversation to make himself seem amazingly experienced. Ugh, ego much?
  3. It doesn’t make you more of a man, dude. Knowing that he’d slept with so many women and was only 26 really put me off because the implication for some men is that the more they sleep around, the more manly they are. This is total bullcrap. Was this guy buying into such sexist ideas?
  4. I was seriously concerned about STDs. One of the biggest reasons why a man who has had a lot of sexual partners puts me off is that I fear he’s a carnival of sexually transmitted illnesses (STIs). Did he use condoms every single time? What about the STIs that can occur even with condom use as a result of skin-to-skin contact, such as herpes and HPV? Besides, many people use condoms incorrectly. Between 17 and 51 percent of people have reported putting a condom on after sex has already started. There are just too many risks.
  5. I assumed he was just looking for sex. The fact that he told me his number on our second date and that it was so high made me wonder if he was just looking for some sex. It was impossible for most of the women he’d slept with to have been long-term relationships considering he was only 26. What were the odds he was looking for a real relationship now?
  6. It was time to define what was going on. On our third date, I asked him what he was really looking for and if he was relationship-minded. I needed to see where the guy was at. I didn’t want to judge him too harshly for having such a high number of sexual partners. Maybe he’d changed and wasn’t looking to add more than one to that number?
  7. Um, no. My initial idea had been right. He wasn’t looking for a serious relationship, he said. He was looking for flings and didn’t want commitment. So I guess I was going to be number 51? Ugh, no thanks!
  8. I was open about my number prejudice. Since we were being honest about what we were looking for, I told him that his number freaked me out a little. I told him I wasn’t judging him but I didn’t feel comfortable with it. He totally got that and there were no hard feelings.
  9. Let’s be friends? The guy was cool to chat to but since we wanted different things, I decided it would be best for us to remain friends. That’s when I learned even more about him, and it wasn’t pretty…
  10. He hadn’t been lying. The guy was into threesomes, one-night-stands, the works. He’d meet a woman, date her for a while, then take her to bed. Most of his sexual experiences involved booze and sometimes drugs. I hung out with some of his friends, who confirmed these things. The guy wasn’t just pretending to bed a lot of women. He got around a lot. Bullet dodged!
  11. I felt guilty. I felt like crap because I’ve always said that it shouldn’t matter if women want to sleep with tons of guys, that it doesn’t make them cheap even if they feel nothing for the guys. Yet, here I was saying that a guy’s number was enough to make me see him as less appealing. Was I being unfair? Was I being the sexist one here?
  12. The thing is, I don’t want to be a number. It boils down to the fact that I don’t want to date someone who treats me like I’m just another number to him, someone to keep his bed warm for a while before being replaced with a new woman. I want someone who sees me for more than what I could bring to his sexual résumé, and this guy didn’t seem like he would.
  13. It’s the intentions behind those digits that matter. A person’s sexual number is just that: a number. This guy made me realize that it’s really one’s intentions behind the number that matter. His number revealed that he was into loads of meaningless, emotionless sex. That’s fine, but it’s not my thing.
  14. At least he was upfront about things. The good thing about this guy was that he’d been honest about what he wanted. He hadn’t tried to lead me on. He hadn’t actually had to tell me about his number, but I’m glad he did. It showed me so much more about what he wanted from relationships and sex, and it was info that helped me make the best choice for myself.
Giulia Simolo is a writer from Johannesburg, South Africa with a degree in English Language and Literature. She has been working as a journalist for more than a decade, writing for sites including AskMen, Native Interiors, and Live Eco. You can find out more about her on Facebook and LinkedIn, or follow her on Twitter @GiuliaSimolo.
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