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Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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For men: in a relationship, do you ask about your partner's body count? Or perhaps you don't ask about it, but ask certain other questions like attitudes about casual sex? Does asking about it actually help with the preoccupation at all? How do you get over it?

Random question: how would you feel about marrying a widow who's only experience was her previous husband?

Like, is this about sex, is it about loyalty, is it about inferiority, is it about adherence to current morals?

Off the top of my head, for me personally I guess it's about something like dignity? A widow (presumably) expected to be married forever, so she does not lose her dignity by remarrying. An abuse victim did not consent to the interaction as so her dignity remains intact. Both cases involve external forces outside of the woman's control. But a promiscuous woman does things within her control to willingly degrades herself and thus becomes undignified and unworthy of respect.

You get over it by doing all the kinky stuff with HER going forward, and if thats off the table for physiological or psychological reasons then you accept who she used to be is not who she is now. She is not the same person today she was yesterday and will not be the same person tomorrow she was 10 years ago.

If your own personal value matrix emphasizes (parnter.bodycount)<(own.bodycount) then either accept that the partner is lying or buy a mail order bride.

It must be noted that you MUST know at least the vagueness of whatever your partner has gotten up to in the past. Finding old nudes of your partner even if you possess your "own" will still be weird if it was never mentioned even in brief. I don't know how this will ultimately extend to the inevitable of kids finding out what mom and dad were like if social media archives go far back enough.

I can't recall ever explicitly asking. In my experience, women were more likely to proactively offer, or get into details about past-relationships in a way that conveyed a rough idea of body count. They always seem to want to tell me about their awful exes, in detail.

Honestly, I don't particularly care, at least within a reasonable range like 0-10ish. Past that, I gradually raise eyebrows, though it's hardly the defining factor in my decision matrix for would/wouldn't date. It also matters greatly whether they're serious about settling down, or still seem intent on screwing around.

Personality, social status, looks, wealth, signs of poor decision making like ending up a single mom? Those matter far more to me.

This probably doesn't answer your question, since I don't know how to make myself stop caring about a problem I've never really cared about. I suppose it's worth trying to meditate on the difference between serial monogamy and casual sex. Someone in their late 20s or early 30s can have a dozen partners even if each relationship was committed and lasted a meaningful amount of time.

They always seem to want to tell me about their awful exes, in detail.

This is a massive red flag in one or both directions.

It doesn't bother me that much. It used to, but I have mostly gotten over it, I suppose. Both of us were very liberal with our sex lives before we wanted to "settle down," so to speak. I don't really know what to tell you, was never a huge issue for me and I did a lot of other emotional work for other issues and that helped calm things generally.

You know, I have a friend who is a born-again virgin, who was of sometimes questionable sexual morality prior to meeting his now-wife. My understanding from him is that she was similar, though I have never talked to her personally about it. They understand this about each other, but other than that they don't speak about it and operate as though they were each other's firsts.

I wouldn't have guessed that would work, but it seems to for them.

I think if you have the sort of communication environment where your partner (I'm assuming a women, and that you the reader are a man) feels comfortable enough to tell you anything/everything, this will eventually come up, generally in the first year or so. I'm probably not a great person to answer this as I've been with my wife since we were teenagers, about 30 years now.

It did come up with her way back then; we'd both had a handful of less-then-serious highschool relationships, neither were virgins. I'd had a lot more actual sex than she had despite my count of unique partners only being 1 higher as I was pretty active with my HS girlfriends and she actually struggled to get her HS boyfriends to actually have sex with her. I grew up in a large metro and she grew up on a farm in a rural part of the same state probably had a lot to do with the different experiences. If she'd gone to my HS she'd probably have been more experienced than me simply due to more opportunity.

I get the impression that our (romantic) lifestyle is likely pretty unpopular on this board, so the only additional detail I'll add is that we've both slept with way more people after getting married than before, usually the same people, always together.

I get the impression that our (romantic) lifestyle is likely pretty unpopular on this board, so the only additional detail I'll add is that we've both slept with way more people after getting married than before, usually the same people, always together.

While not for me, as I'm far too jealous and insecure for this lifestyle, I am always somewhat in awe of this.

Partially as I deeply respect your strong sense of self and self confidence to be fine with this, and partially because it is kind of a power move.

Props to you and your wife.

I appreciated your advice downthread, but to congratulate him on his way of life is such a different set of values from me that it's completely bizarre to me...

Talking about attitudes about various things, including sex, is important. But I don't see how digging into the past is going to help anything. Usually obsessing over such things is the sign you're not feeling secure in the relationship, and if that's the case, the focus should be on trying to figure out why it is. Digging out more juicy details about the past is not going to help any. I know it's hard to "stop thinking about the white elephant" but realizing no good may come from following that road may help.

For men: in a relationship, do you ask about your partner's body count?

No, but it tends to come up naturally. But also, I and most of the people I've dated didn't really know? Depending how you define body count, I'm probably somewhere between one and three dozen?

Does asking about it actually help with the preoccupation at all? How do you get over it?

What preoccupation? Who cares how many people either of you have slept with? Being preoccupied with exes or their penis size (as described below) just reeks of insecurity. It seems more productive to focus on being a good partner in and out of the bedroom and having confidence in your self-worth.

Depending how you define body count, I'm probably somewhere between one and three dozen?

How many people have you had PiV or PiA sex with?

Don't know. Probably around a dozen, maybe more.

This type of reaction you've shown to me makes me angry. You clearly don't respect my values enough to even ask why before you start telling me how it looks, and ridiculing the thought process right out of the gate. But maybe that was your intention.

I deliberately avoided dating for this long because I only ever wanted to save myself for one special person, to make her my "first" everything, and it's a really bitter pill to swallow that I've waited too long to get my life in order and there is basically nobody left at my age who is relatively normal and also did the same thing as me, so it won't be as special, and I will probably feel permanently bitter about it.

If that seems too romantic for you, fine. The bitter reality that we are all mammals that just have instincts to mate with each other before we die is an extremely uncomfortable thought, and I think society has been harmed by embracing it to the extent that it has. I finally believe that I'm a good person, and there are other good people like me, and the world as it currently is is unfair to them and their values. But there's nothing I can do about it, so it's just about finding the best way to cope.

It's not like they don't exist, but most of them have negative reasons for remaining virgins for so long (like trauma or trust-issues). Some of these reasons aren't too hard to overcome, others are nearly impossible. And there's still many women with low body counts in Asia, but I understand if that doesn't appeal to you.

Personally, I don't mind higher (5-10) body-counts per se, what I mind is the reason behind them, like superficiality, a lack of loyalty, hedonism, etc.

You sound pretty firm that this isn't any kind of inferiority complex. Have you tried unpacking a bit more what it actually is?

For instance, when you think about the body-count disparity, are you angrier that you waited (FOMO) or that she (maybe) didn't?

When you say you wanted it to be "special" and that you feel "bitter" about your first time, are you most upset about the experience getting devalued in itself? Or that she might value it less (giving you feelings of rejection/ being unappreciated)? Or that you are getting someone less pristine? Or just pure anger at the idea of someone preceding you?

For what it's worth, although randy Aellas apparently do exist, a large proportion of most young women's early "body count" outside committed LTRs will have been owing to some combination of: unpleasant direct pressure or manipulation by a date; unpleasant social expectations to seem cool and not like a boring prude; and/or maladaptive coping impulses from some kind of painful trauma or personal issues. Women mostly talk about these youthful encounters as war stories, and while not everyone would admit outright regret, I've never, in my whole life, heard a (non-professional) woman express enjoyment of the sex itself in an early-20s hookup. No icky memory of a casual hookup will make the average woman less appreciative of the deep, intimate sexual connection she's finally found with the love of her life, so if you're at all concerned that she won't find it special... that really really is not an issue. You might as well be jealous that she had some near-miss collisions with drunk drivers before setting out on a road trip with you.

In my experience of both, girls under "unpleasant social expectations" are all giggly and dripping wet, while with "the love of her life" you are grinding your teeth and enduring. Funny how that works.

You seem very confident in your intuitions about your partners' enjoyment during sex, which is not something that men or women are notoriously great at judging. (And for reference, young women mostly giggle when they're nervous or uncomfortable, and vaginal fluid fluctuates with hormones, not necessarily with arousal.) But your experience is your own, and I'm sorry you apparently had some bad sex with a woman who loved you.

I'm a little confused by the wider claim, but if the idea is that women exclusively enjoy casual sex with Chads, hate sex with men they love, and are unaroused by romantic attention, emotional intimacy, care or commitment... well, that's a pretty extraordinary thing to argue, but if true it seems like it should be not "funny" but great? "Bang as many hotties as possible, no uggos, no fats, no true love, lie as much as you can" closely matches various classic evopsych statements about men's preferences and MOs, so if that's really what girls like too, then seems like we should be headed into a golden age of harmonious gender relations.

And if I had said that in the latter case they are closing their eyes and thinking of England, would you have retorted that nobody cares about England anymore, or would you have understood that I was speaking figuratively? For reference, I can't remember a girl literally giggling during sex.

And the picture is far from great, because I'm only growing older and more unattractive while competition is growing more fierce, and also because I'm a romantic at heart, and it chafes that emotional intimacy is a hindrance to good sex, here in the reality and not in the words of somebody who tries to legitimize female dual strategy colloquially known as Alpha Fux Beta Bux.

I don't know, man, I can only speak from my own experience as a happily married person, surrounded by other single-to-low-body-count people in similarly normal marriages, plus several nice, friendly and pretty low-body-count single ladies who I wish would meet these true romantics you say are out there. From where I stand, all that redpill dogma from those ponytailed/overtanned skeezy old influencer dudes is about as close to lived reality as the Flat Earth stuff. Some of it sounds like an elaborate fantasy by people who never moved past high-school resentment of the cheerleaders and football stars; a bit of Heartiste quoted here the other day was so frankly homoerotic (in a masochistic way) that I kinda wanted to tell the guy to just marry Chad since he finds him so fuckable.

Anyway, like I said, I'm sorry you've had some bad experiences so far. Hope you find someone to be happy with.

I respect your commitment man. There are definitely virginal women out there, though finding them outside of a church is going to be an exercise in endless frustration...

I ultimately think there are a lot more important things than virginity, so this is just something I need to decide how to tackle for the reason you said.

Good luck brother. As always, partner dance is the way…. ;)

This type of reaction you've shown to me makes me angry. You clearly don't respect my values enough to even ask why before you start telling me how it looks, and ridiculing the thought process right out of the gate. But maybe that was your intention.

For what it's worth, no, I wasn't trying to troll you or make you angry. I had assumed we were starting from a position that your values or worldview were maladaptive given that you're asking for help in 'getting over it,' and use the word preoccupation which to me at least carries a negative valence.

But if you want to dig in and insist on your values, I wish you luck in your coping.

Speaking of negative valence, "you want to dig in" also has a negative valence, along with the rest of that last sentence. For one, it's not just me, this is an inherent part of the human psyche of many people. For another, I have a hard time thinking that I'm wrong, seeing all the people who cannot handle casual sex or do crazy things like trying to get their hookups or their exes fired because they are too bitter from breaking up.

I haven't been in a new relationship in fifteen years, but I knew my girlfriend's body count and it absolutely mattered to me before committing.

I didn't get over it, it was low enough that I was satisfied. If it were higher, I wouldn't have kept dating her.

If you're already in a relationship, you're probably better off not knowing.

Hell no I don't ask. I have a rough idea and that's bad enough, I know it would destroy me to get more info. I wish I knew how to get over it. I've been struggling with the mental health issues of my wife having had sex with other people (whereas she was my first) for almost 10 years now. Stoicism helps me some (and indeed it's the reason I got into Stoicism), but I'm not always feeling rational enough where appeals to philosophy can convince my brain to quiet down. Therapy didn't help at all. At this point I've given up on fixing it and figure I'll just have to live with the pain until the day I die.

Was this because you weren't trying, or because a lack of success at getting laid despite it? That matters, at least in terms of how you interpret things.

More importantly, it should greatly reassure you that you beat out all those other men in being the one she decided to settle down with. If you've been married for 10 years (and hopefully happily), that's a far more meaningful commitment.

Lack of success despite trying (to a point: at some point one starts to figure "if I've failed every time I'm just going to fail this time too" and gives up, but that took years). One thing that's continually surprising to me is how much those years of rejection still hurt on some level. Logically it makes no sense - I made it. I genuinely love my wife and we have a great relationship, but somehow in defiance of rational thought it's hard to shake the feelings of pain from back then. Thankfully it gets easier year by year - at this point it's mostly gone, but not entirely.

Similarly I think you are completely correct in your analysis of the situation I described with insecurity. We've been together 10 years, married for 8 - I won over all those other dudes, and I have the receipts to show it. Unfortunately (as I'm sure you're well aware, lol), human brains are pretty shit at being rational sometimes. Thankfully that, too, is getting easier year by year - perhaps it's habituation, perhaps something else, but it has gotten easier even if it has never gone away entirely (and I'm doubtful that it'll ever go away entirely).

I've been trying to think on the points that you and @fmac raised, so as to try to give you both a good answer and not just shooting from the hip. I think that ultimately, the reason I feel insecure in the way I do is not because I fear something per se, but because I believe that sex is something very special, almost sacred. And as such I believe that the more it is shared, the less it means to share it. By way of analogy, when a person gets married for the first time, I find that to be a very exciting and meaningful event. When someone gets married for the fifth time, I don't really think it's significant any more. That is roughly how I feel about sex, so basically I have that belief deep in my core values which says "this isn't particularly special between you two, you're just the latest man". Again I know this to not be particularly rational (though to be fair, values often aren't), but it can be difficult to maintain rationality on such an emotionally charged topic. The most helpful thing I've found thus far (as I mentioned in another post) is Stoic practices, where I try to hold the negative feelings at arm's length and remind myself "it doesn't matter, what matters is that I conduct myself well". I'm not always able to do that either, but sometimes I am - and in those moments the practice does help.

Dude, you described my feelings perfectly here. I tried to do it here but didn't expect the pushback. I didn't suspect my views were so alien to a lot of the world. Sex was so synonymous with marriage in my upbringing, so your marriage analogy makes a lot of sense. In the Old Times before everyone was forced to let young people do whatever they want, sex was synonymous with marriage for a lot of people. Modern day relationships are sort of like micro-marriages from this perspective. And yes, it is a bitter pill to swallow that I purposely avoided micro-marriages until I was ready to walk the walk, and very few others even stopped to consider it. I do not like modern society. Maybe I would like it better if my evangelical parents didn't instill these traditionalist values in me, but at least one of them didn't like the way modern society handles relationships, either, so it's hard to blame them. Birth control really must have cheapened sex a lot.

Yes, see, this is why I was so resistant in my previous threads on this subject when some people were like "why do you dislike premarital sex so much? Have you tried just giving up your values?" I think I am pretty similar to you. Yes, I think it's best if I do not know. Thanks for your reply.

You're welcome. For what it's worth, I don't think it's a problem of values per se. I suspect (though I can't prove) that many if not most people are wired to want sexual exclusivity (including past exclusivity) with their partner. I've known plenty of people who don't have traditional values around sexuality, but who say they would rather not know about their partner's body count because it will just bother them. That suggests to me that, despite our culture's attempt to brush promiscuity (or even serial monogamy) off as "it's just sex, who cares", many people are in fact deeply wired to care about sex and to not be able to easily shrug the past off as "well, (s)he's with me now so it doesn't matter".

I agree with the advice of both @yofuckreddit and @ThomasdelVasto - this may be something you have to compromise on due to the nature of the society we live in, but not necessarily so because people waiting for marriage do still exist. Just be aware you're making it harder on yourself to find a partner if you make that a dealbreaker. Nothing wrong with that, one simply has to be aware of what they are setting themselves up for.

For some unsolicited advice of my own:

  • Be prepared that even if you figure you're ok with someone with a sexual past, your feelings might change. I didn't start to suffer from retroactive jealousy until my wife and I had been dating for 9 months.
  • If you think you might struggle with this topic, try to resist the temptation to sleep with a woman before getting married. My wife and I were already sleeping together when I started to struggle with her past, at which point there wasn't anything I could reasonably do about it (besides keep struggling) without being a massive hypocrite and the scum of the earth. What was I going to do, break up with my (then) gf because I felt bad because she had sex with other bfs? We were doing that very thing. Nor could I have tried to then find a woman who was a virgin without being a virgin myself (at least, not write being a massive hypocrite and the scum of the earth). I know how strong the temptation is - firsthand. But I wish I hadn't gone down that road.
  • If you pursue a relationship with a woman who has a past, and you start to struggle with feelings of retroactive jealousy, do not talk to her about it. I did this with my wife (while we were still dating, and once briefly after we got married) and all that it accomplished was that I hurt her deeply. Because what could she do? She couldn't change her past, after all, nor does she have a magic wand to wave to make my brain stop being hung up on this topic. Instead she rather bitterly remarked that she wished I had a gf before her whom I had slept with, that way it wouldn't be a struggle for our relationship. She also lamented that she was going to be a cautionary tale for Christian girls everywhere, that if they had sex with a man they didn't then marry it would ruin their marriage. For my part, all that happened was I got horrible guilt that I get to carry around that I hurt her, and moreover that I continue to have the feelings which hurt her. But I did at least learn to never speak of it again - I would bet dollars to donuts that my wife has no idea that I still struggle with these feelings of jealousy (though thankfully much less often than I used to, probably due to the wonders of habituation).

Regardless, good luck brother. I doubt it'll be easy for you, because it hasn't been for me. I can only hope that some of the advice here (from me but also others) will help to make it a little better. I wish that human psychology wasn't susceptible to this failure mode, but alas it is. I am truly rooting for you though.

I have what I believe to be natural male jealousy and insecurity, probably similar to both of you.

I have a higher body count and volume of experience than my wife. This is something you may not want to do, and statistically it makes your future relationships more likely to fail, but having been around the block at least once will calibrate the value of sex to something less than how you view it now. I won't say what's right or what's wrong on that, but I do believe there's a difference between sex and "lovemaking".

Another reason why having at least some experience is important is that you realize that many women are terrible lays. Given how little they have to actually do, a natural conclusion is that men are pretty fucking bad at sex as well. I historically took some comfort in the fact that even if I was with someone who had been with more people, I was above par.

My biggest concern for you right now is that some of that insecurity - that another dude before you is a better lay and satisfied her more deeply - may be true because you have no experience. It took years to elevate my technique, and sex that felt transcendent in my second year doing it seems like amateur hour in comparison to what I did later. To be clear this isn't anything exotic - even 1-1 monogamous and toy-free sex requires a lot of effort. There's a huge sleight of hand in the US Christian culture, at least, where everyone's pretending they're not having sex when they actually are, and realizing that really pissed my wife off for years. Christian women, IME, aren't interested in virgin men.

I haven't really answered your question yet. First: no, I don't ask about historical body count. It only has the potential to be bad news. I believe you can learn about someone's tastes and preferences effectively without hearing that Joe from Accounting was the first one to put a thumb in her ass. All it would do is make me jealous.

The second thing is that true emotional connection and enthusiasm is a huge force multiplier for high-quality sex. If you are a great partner in all the other ways and love sex with them, you'll be at or near the top of their historical experiences.

Can you name your fear? Is it that you won't be the best? That they'll cheat? Because you do need to suss out the probablity of the latter happening. I don't think going into the gory details helps. If it's the former, you should know that people live with that reality all the time.

There's a huge sleight of hand in the US Christian culture, at least, where everyone's pretending they're not having sex when they actually are, and realizing that really pissed my wife off for years.

Why did that piss her off?

Recognizing that such a huge percentage of your family, friends, schoolmates, etc. that are part of your culture were all lying to you doesn't feel great. I don't think she had sexual FOMO, but who knows, maybe that was part of it too.

Thanks for your reply, you clearly understand how I feel, at least a little. It's not about me not being the best - obviously, if she loves me, she will tolerate me until I get more experience, and you're totally right about sex not being just in the bedroom - and it's not about them cheating, I don't think either of those are things that I fear. It's that I waited for marriage and she didn't, so someone else has experienced such a level of intimacy with her, and intimacy with me will not feel as special as it otherwise would have; being "the first" for everything would have been far more preferable, and the thought of someone else having done it to her besides me is painful. SubstantialFrivolity effectively convinced me that I should try to not learn any more than that, and my brain will probably eventually find a comforting headcanon if left to its own devices. I guess it boils down to just plain jealousy and some sense of purity. But like most of my anxieties, I find that keeping them private and not doing anything about them generally helps them go away without incident.

SubstantialFrivolity effectively convinced me that I should try to not learn any more than that, and my brain will probably eventually find a comforting headcanon if left to its own devices.

I support this and I want to double up on his advice not to talk about it. Probably for different reasons - I think his wife was being a bit unfair by turning it around back on him when he expressed his jealousy. But talking about it is a catch-22. It makes you appear weak to your partner, and will increase the chances of something negative happening as a result, as you can see from his anecdote.

In the modern world I'll throw something out there - a woman who's slept with ~<1 person a year since becoming "active" is probably a good deal on the sexual market. To me that shows a significant amount of personal restraint. I would be pretty happy with that if I were still dating to marry.

Best of luck!

and intimacy with me will not feel as special as it otherwise would have

As somebody who have been in relationships before "settling down", this is not true. I don't feel like my previous experiences - many of which I don't even remember now - diminish my bond to my wife in any way, and I don't think she feels our relationship is less special because she was married in the past too. It's all the past and gone, and the special thing is now.

I guess it boils down to just plain jealousy and some sense of purity.

In marriage, sometimes you need to make sacrifices. I think sacrificing the part of your selfishness that is jealousy to the past is not a bad thing to do. And if you keep in mind why you're doing it and what you're getting in return, you may feel better about it. You can't make yourself not feel things that you feel, but you can conquer those things and not let them make you unhappy. Fortunately, these are things that depend only on you alone - so nothing prevents you from doing that.

Are you practically asking how to gain information about a female partner's sexual past?

No, he's asking whether other people do it.

It's called "retroactive jealousy"

I have another word for it. "Standards." Most women do not hold themselves to a high standard, and society has done its best to lower standards for female behavior, but you can choose to keep your standards high and then retroactive jealousy becomes disgust at disgusting behavior.

So if I can barely remember most of the times I had sex, your girl probably is the same.

Men and women are not the same, they have never been the same, they will never be the same. I don't understand why you would make this assumption, because it seems like wishful thinking. In fact, I would assume the opposite. The reason why you forget is because you are a man, and your reproductive strategy is different than women. I would assume women, who can only reproduce with one man at a time, would be different. I would expect them to get attached, and to think about their partners, and to remember. You even said yourself that it's the orgasm that makes you forget. You then apply this to women, which, LOL. LMAO, even.

So to be clear your stance here is that my statement of "i assume most people don't remember the majority of the sex they've had very well, if at all" is untrue when applied to women, and is in fact the opposite?

So you're saying that women have near-autobiographical memory of every time they've had sex?

I would assume that your experience as a man would be representative of men, and given the differing reproductive strategies of the sexes, it's more likely to be the opposite than the same.