On Playing for Keeps I said:
There’s a double standard because the sexes are very different around the studs vs. sluts issue. In a general sense I advise both the man and the woman to have as limited of a sexual history as possible. I believe that’s been a massive benefit to Jennifer and myself and our happiness. However I also advise very strongly that you need to be assured that you have a good sexual chemistry together before you get married. I can tell you dozens of horror stories of those that have deeply regretted waiting until the wedding to experience sex with their spouse.
In the comments frequent and appreciated commenter Doug1 said:
I think it matters VASTLY more that the prospective wife have a fairly and ideally quite low partner count for lots of reasons. I think it’s actually better for the prospective husband to have a good lot of sexual experience. It’s better for the captain first mate dynamic if he’s teaching her some things sexually, from a starting point of her having lots of hunger and enthusiasm.
To which my reader Technical Virgin emails me both quotes and asks:
I read somewhere that every sexual partner a guy has before he’s married reduces the likelihood of sexual satisfaction in his marriage. Also, you’ve mentioned the insecurity issue of being with someone who’s had a lot of partners. Kind of seems like a big risk for a virgin to take–increased chance of infidelity and serious insecurity in the sack?
What say you Athol? Should virgins hold out (even longer haha) for a guy with a low/no number, or do the virgin and the Mr. Many Experiences have a shot at happiness?
Athol: It’s basically a case of having a low sexual partner count for both the woman and the man, seems to create longer lasting and happier marriages. It is a bigger effect for women, than for men. That being said, these are simply influences on outcomes and not destiny. There’s double-virgin horror stories and slut+stud successes.
The old joke is that you can’t make a ho’ a housewife, and neither do I think you can easily make a player a stayer. I can see how some sexual experience under a man’s belt makes him look good to women in a general sense that he can actually attract women, but after a certain point it all becomes a little bit icky doesn’t it? Once a guy is up in the 20+ range you have to start wondering how rancid some of those holes were.
Also in this day and age, there’s actually zero reason to need prior partner experience to know some sexual skills. This is not 1950 where a teenage boy could only imagine what a girls naked breasts looks like unless he managed to convince one to take her top off. There’s books, DVD’s, toys, websites and enough porn freely available on the Internet to crash the computers on the Starship Enterprise. I mean you thought Genghis Khan saw a lot of pussy…
Half the fun is discovering things together and trying stuff out. Bedsides that, not all women are the same and what works for one doesn’t work for another. It’s the practice together that makes things really click. Prior experience might get you through the first dozen times together more easily, I’m not sure it matters at all after that.
And yes I completely get that “banging everyone” really sounds like fun. I’m not immune to wanting to do that either. Trust me on that account, I write a freaking sex blog, I’m horny as a goat eating three square meals a day of horny goat weed. But at the end of the day, when we’re together, it really is special to me that the only woman I’ve really been with is Jennifer. It’s also special to her that it’s true as well. There’s a mutual cycle of appreciation for being each others only, it helps bond us together and create a sense of what we have is special. So when we talk about having sex every day together, I think all that plays a serious part in our success. When the double virgin strategy works out well, it works out really well, it’s just not newsworthy so it seems a lot less visible than it really is.
If I had sexual experiences with more women, I know I would very much enjoy them in the moment as I’m not shy about body parts or technique. But I’m not convinced that I would be as happy as I am now as a whole if I did that. In any case, Jennifer can get me off amazingly well and it would take months to train someone else to replace her. She gets better and better too, her latest trick is after a lot of foreplay getting me off just by squeezing her vagina on me. I think the correct term for that is ninjutsu.
Plus the insecurity issue isn’t exactly limited to “Am I the best she’s had?”, because any serious prior lovers, or even Beta Orbiters never go away anymore. You’re always one Facebook search away from her old boyfriend private messaging her. You’re a pre-paid phone from Wal-Mart away from her sending naked photos of herself back to him. Old flames can burst into an inferno very quickly. Marriages have their ups and their downs and old lovers emailing her during a down can turn into critical incidents.
The stats I heard on the radio one morning driving to work late last year was that Facebook was now credited as a factor in 30% of divorces.
So yeah you can certainly try it with Mr. Many Experiences, it’s just a influence on outcomes, not destiny. Ultimately the best target for both sexes is someone that clearly has a good sex drive, that can contain it to one other person.


