I Told My Boyfriend How Many People I’d Slept with…and He Didn’t Like the Answer

“My boyfriend can’t get over how many people I’ve slept with. I shouldn’t have told him, but he pressed me for the info. He was 'nerdy’ for most of high school and college, and just started coming into his own in his mid to late 20s. I have been dating consistently for years, and have had my fair share of hookups and relationships. And while I don’t think my number is crazy at all, he can’t deal with the discrepancy. We’ve been dating for two years and we’re serious. I don’t want to break up. How can I handle this?”

I agree that you probably shouldn’t have told him, but lots of people fall into the trap of discussing their sexual history with their current partner, and I get it. If you trust someone, it’s natural to want to talk about what you’ve learned from past relationships and sexual experiences. That said, numbers really aren’t necessary, and rarely do anything aside from making one person feel bad.

But you can’t go back, and his reaction may have provoked an important conversation. After all (and as you well know), this isn’t an issue of who has slept with more people. It’s about his comfort with his past, and it’s about both of you establishing that your needs are being met by this relationship.

First, you have to figure out the problem you’re tackling, because it will change the course of action.

I’ve been happily married for 30 years and it wasn’t because my husband was a 10 and made tons of money.

I’ve been happily married because I had a list of 30 personality traits I was looking for and my husband had 29 of them.

His physical looks and salary wasn’t on the list.

Yes, yes, we’ve already both agreed you are different from most women out there. However, I think you’d find I have most of the personality traits you are thinking about as well. Those traits work well in corporate office environments and with a good chunk of women. Physical looks will always be important for most people. Most women won’t outright admit to caring about money but being able to be taken to European, Hawaii, or the Caribbean multiple times a year, taken out to fine dining, being given nice jewelry, flowers, handbags and shoes are something most women greatly desire. Those all cost money. One thing men learn in college and beyond is watch how women act, not what they say.

Why should I? I made no claim other than that IF a woman were being beaten, she was still economically trapped and couldn’t leave. That is the only claim I made. I don’t have to prove anything else. You are the one who made a claim: that reports of abuse are all exaggerated.

Yes, they are exaggerated as modern society acts like it was prevalent yet there is no proof that it was. If it wasn’t prevalent then we have made a piss-poor trade going from 75-80% marriage rates with 1% divorce to 45% marriage rates with 50% divorce and 10% of kids born out of wedlock to 2/3rds.

It’s very easy to infer them when you bring up the subject over and over again. If it wasn’t a material issue, you and other feminists would never bring it up. There are women that rape their husbands and other men, but its not material so we as society don’t care about it and don’t use it as an argument to massively change the character of society and laws.

(Anecdotes and feminist junk studies do not prove anything)

In other words, you will only accept scholarly literature from sources that would have had no interest in or reason to examine domestic abuse (particularly given that in many states, beating your wife wasn't even illegal before the early 1900s... who would be studying it? How would they get the info?) And of course, the minute they take an interest in it, they become feminist and are therefore dismissed.

That's like a Muslim saying "Show me where Islamic men are running pedophile gangs. I'll only accept studies published by Islamic men. And if they are publishing such studies, they are clearly unIslamic and they don't count."

It’s very easy to infer them when you bring up the subject over and over again.

No, I brought it up ONCE, in post #234. Anything I have said about it since then has been in response to challenges by men who are adamant that men almost never beat women, even when it was legal, because... because why, exactly? Well, because you are pretty darn sure that they just wouldn't, because... they just wouldn't. I guess.

Now, WHERE DID I MAKE A CLAIM THAT DOMESTIC ABUSE WAS PREVALENT? WHERE? WHICH POST. SHOW ME.

And I only half way trust academic studies (see global warming). I definitely don’t trust “studies” from single group issues on ANY issue and on either side of the argument. And Anecdotes, while good for context, are worthless with a population the size the US has been. A 0.01% rate of abuse would still provide 4k examples with 40 million married couples say 70 years ago despite the fact that 39.9996 million of the marriage didn’t have it.

YOU provide proof. You are the one who made a claim. You claimed that feminists had published all sort of abuse accusations, and that they are exaggerated. So let me help you, little boy.

1.) First, you need to show the feminist studies making claims about the level of abuse. A link is sufficient.

2. Then, you need to show or at least give some material to counter it. Again, a link is sufficient.

Again, you just implied it in this post

"Anything I have said about it since then has been in response to challenges by men who are adamant that men almost never beat women, even when it was legal, because... because why, exactly?

One, that's not what the guys were saying and two there is no reason to get upset about the claim if it nearly never happened (ie not prevalent).

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