Losing it

My 16 year old son has a girlfriend.  He was remarking to me the other day that when in her company, he feels “weird”. “You know dad, just this weird feeling, I don’t know how to describe it.” “I responded; “Do you feel this “feeling” in the upper or lower portion of your body?” ~smile~

I then went on to discuss any areas of information that he perhaps missed in his schoolyard discussions with his friends.  Turns out that he is well informed.

I lost my virginity when I was 14.  When I was younger and where I grew up this age was not an unusual one for one’s first sexual experience.  It seems to me that the kids today are waiting longer?  Maybe if I had X-Box back then I would be suitably engaged and would not be as curious.  Thinking back, having sex was more of a peer pressure thing than having anything to do with love.  Surprisingly in my case, it was more pressure from the girls than from me.  There was a certain expectation that I should be taking the lead and initiating something.  I got dumped quite a few times when I was young because the girl thought that I didn’t like girls, was gay because of the lack of my roving hands.  I was just trying to be the respectable person that I was raised to be.  Once I understood how the game was supposed to work…I was ok.

To the point, I was looking to see if there has been any change in the age at which the “typical” person loses their virginity over the years and came across some interesting data.  The following was taken from the Durex Global Sex Survey 2005

Age of first sex

• People worldwide are having sex for the first time at an average age of 17.3
• Just over a third (35%) say they were 16 or under when they lost their virginity
• Young people continue to have sex at an earlier age than previous generations: while the 25-34s lost their virginity at 17.9, the 21-24 year olds were 17.5 and 16-20 year olds were just 16.3
• Women are sexually active earlier than men – at 17.2 compared with 17.5
• People from Iceland are having sex younger than any other country (15.6) followed by the Germans (15.9), Swedes (16.1) and the Danes (16.1)
• People in India are the oldest to lose their virginity (19.8) followed by the Vietnamese (19.6), Indonesians (19.1) and the Malaysians (19)

To all the girls I’ve loved before

I was asked a rather odd question by my partner the other day.  She wanted to know how many women I had slept with.  Immediately I thought this might be a trap so I responded, “Less than you probably think.”

This is not the first time I have been asked this question by a “significant other”.  The first time I was asked I made a terrible mistake and answered truthfully.  Subsequently on future occasions I skirted the issue as best I could. The truth is, without detailed explanation as to the “why” of the encounter, I am sure a “number” would have little benefit.

I am not sure if this “asking of something that shouldn’t be asked” is a female trait.  I for one most likely do not want to know how many partners my partner has historically “bonded” with.  There is a curiousity within me, but I wouldn’t ask as I most likely don’t want to know the truth.

With my current partner, she has been very open about her “history”.  She had two relationships before me where a physical aspect was part and parcel of said relationships.  Nothing wild and crazy there.

One woman that I had a relationship with before actually sat in a bar with me one Saturday night and pointed out all of the men she had “one night stands” with over the preceding few years.  Yuck!  Although it is written that we should not hold another’s history against them, this kind of information made me wonder about the personality of this woman, where before that I didn’t specifically care.  She was “in my eyes” a nice person and conducted herself well.  Once I added in this “did not need to know” information..it did make me wonder if I were just another fling that had somehow lasted a bit longer than one night.

I guess I should have told here that I really had no great appreciation for her letting me in on her previous antics.  Over time she went into greater detail about her kinky preferences.  The really shocking part to me was her admission that she had been too wild in her past and now that she had found me she wished to settle down…

You can imagine that this particular decision would not make sense to most men.  It didn’t to me.
It turns out that was exactly what happened.  I spend the next few years wondering why I had to put up with a less than enthusiastic effort while the guys before me got the “full-blown” version.

The point is, I would rather not know ANYTHING about previous sexual experiences of a partner.  The only time the knowledge serves a positive purpose if when she says her former lovers were not as talented as I am.  I will assume that sometimes this is but an ego-boosting fib, but I can overlook that…

It is possible to have a loving, honest relationship without disclosing every detail of one’s sexual history to one’s current partner or spouse.  Indeed, I feel it’s a sign of high maturity and self-confidence not to ask for details of one’s lover’s past!

A true lover can say, “Before there was an ‘us’, there was a ‘you’ and a ‘me’, and I will never use what you did in the past against you.  I honour your right to have lived the life you chose to live before we were together, and I ask that you honour my right to my past as well.”

True love focuses on the joy of the present and a shared commitment to the future; it seldom dwells on the past.  There are times when a focus on the past matters; a history of abuse or molestation can have huge ramifications for one’s future sex life, as can certain sexually-transmitted infections.  But with those caveats, I think it’s safe to advise a policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue.”

Statistically:

Among adult males 25-44 years of age, 97 percent have had sexual contact with an opposite-sex partner in their lives; 97 percent have had vaginal intercourse, 90 percent have had oral sex with a female, and 40 percent, anal sex with a female. Among women, the proportions who have had sexual contact with an opposite-sex partner were similar.

Males 30-44 years of age reported an average (median) of 6-8 female sexual partners in their lifetimes. Among women 30-44 years of age, the median number of male sexual partners in their lifetimes was about four. The findings appear to be similar to previous surveys conducted in the early 1990’s.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/ad/361-370/ad362.htm

The following was taken from and more statistics can be found at the Durex Global Sex Survey 2005

Number of sexual partners

• Globally, people have had an average number of nine sexual partners
• Men have had more sexual partners than women – 10.2 compared with 6.9
• The Turks have had more partners than any other country (14.5), compared with Australians (13.3), New Zealanders (13.2) and Icelanders (13)
• Indians have had the fewest sexual partners (3) compared with the Chinese (3.1), the Vietnamese (3.2) and those from Hong Kong (3.7)
• Almost two thirds (65%) of people in Hong Kong have had just one sexual partner, compared to 12% in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Greece