Why ask the number anyway?

A while back, I wrote about what a person's "number" even means (that is, the number of people with whom they've shared sex), and how there are several different answers that I could give, depending on how you want to define "sex".

A blog post at And That's Why You're Single (I dislike the name, and the philosophy that often underlies the advice given on that blog, but this looked interesting) asks:

I’m genuinely interested to hear why people ask this question or why the answer even matters. I also want to know what encourages people to answer such a question.

While I think the specific number is often irrelevant, for me it is important to have some idea of my partner's level and types of experience. Book-knowledge and fantasy can only take you so far in understanding your body's reactions and responses to stimuli, and that goes for sexual behaviours as much as anything else. For that reason, of more interest to me is the number of sexual acts that a person has tried, and what their feelings about them were and are.

Because I am a BDSM kinkster, with a rather diverse range of desires and activities I enjoy within that identification, and some very specific things within that range that are important to me, it becomes important to understand how reciprocal my desires are for a partner.

As a top, it is important to understand the level of experience because I need to know how to pace both individual sexual encounters and the sexual or D/s relationship as a whole. If she has tried everything under the sun several times over, then I know that I can take her word for it that x works and y doesn't, and go to town with the good things and leave out the bad things. If she's never actually tried BDSM before, or has only a limited amount of experience, then I will need to take things more slowly, easing my partner through various types of pain, stimuli, restriction, and emotional play, both to feel out what works in practice (as opposed to just in her fantasies) and to let her get used to what is involved.

As a bottom, although I haven't done very much bottoming, I also would need to have some idea of my partner's experience, both to understand how much feedback might be needed to help her manage me well, and to feel safe in her hands for different things (I'm not saying I couldn't play with an inexperienced top, but rather, that I would want more things spelled out before we began play, and I might have more reluctance to try some things).

I don't know how that works with vanilla couples - is there a sense that a more inexperienced partner might need a chance to explore more to figure out what works, or need to be eased along? Perhaps there's a thing about teaching them how to do it (but each person is unique, so one can only ever teach someone how to have sex with oneself, not with anybody else). There seem to be assumptions out there in the sex/dating advice blogosphere about the ubiquity of certain sex acts (mostly fellatio or cunnilingus or both) and the value (or lack of) that those acts therefore have (or, in dating terms, that a person who doesn't do/hasn't done them has!) I would point to a link, but I usually click away from such posts in disgust and promptly forget where I saw them. Anyway, the point being, is there the same value in exploring or experimenting, from a vanilla perspective, that there is in BDSM terms, where the palette seems so much broader? (I'm not saying it is broader necessarily, because maybe there's a palette in vanilla sex that I don't know or don't appreciate because I have my BDSM palette) If there is, then I guess a partner's number would matter on the same grounds that it matters to me as a top. If there isn't that value in exploring, then what's the reason for that?

The "That's Why You're Single" poster quotes from the movie Chasing Amy, and this line by Alyssa struck me particularly:

I was an experimental girl,for Christ’s sake! Maybe you knew early on that your track was from point A to B–but unlike you, I wasn’t given a fucking map at birth, so I tried it all!

To me, it looks like the same issue.

I remembered a documentary on the British horror movie tradition, in which ne episode looked at Michael Reeves' "Witchfinder General", and an anecdote about his relationship with lead actor Vincent Price (a famous horror movie star):

Price eventually cracked, snapping: "Young man, I have made eighty-four films. What have you done?" Reeves replied: "I've made two good ones."

As it turned out, Reeves was right about what he wanted from Price, and after seeing the completed movie Price admitted that.

My point in mentioning it is that perhaps a person's "number" isn't what's important:

- "Young man, I've had 84 sexual relationships, what have you ever done?"
- "I've had two good ones."

***

As for "what encourages people to answer such a question", I think that the exchange of information that I discussed in reference to BDSM topping and bottoming is a good reason to answer honestly and openly. I think also, that if the issue seems important to a partner, then one generally wants to give an answer, however perilous it may seem to do so. Again, there seems to me to be more value in talking about what types of experience a person has and wants to have (and which they haven't tried yet) rather than a single figure for the number of people.