Itemise your conquests at your peril
Men and women agree that 10 ex-lovers is the ideal number, but should a lady or gentleman ever tell, asks Cristina Odone
IT’S a crucial scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and for my money ranks with Meg Ryan faking an orgasm in When Harry Met Sally. Hugh Grant’s character, looking like the uncomfortable, repressed Englishman he is, fidgets and squirms at a cafe table as the upfront American he’s fallen for, played by Andie MacDowell, merrily lists her previous lovers.
There were various rolls in the hay (she was a country girl). One paramour had a hairy back. Another was a “shock”. There was a “disappointing” one and another, “who broke my heart”. Number 22 fell asleep (“that was my first year in England“). Number 27 was a mistake (“he kept screaming“); 28 was Spencer; 29, his father; 32 was lovely. . . . and then there is the man she is about to marry.
That’s 33 lovers. “Not as many as Madonna,” she points out. But a great deal more than anyone should admit to – at least to a prospective partner.
This is not my prudish hunch, but the very scientific finding of SeekingArrangement.com
The dating website asked 1 000 clients to name the perfect number of ex-lovers anyone should have, and the answer, from both males and females, was 10.
Any more, claim the respondents to the survey, would be promiscuous; any less would betray an inexperienced fumbler, or a repressed loner.
So 10 it is, and I can see why. Nine will have ironed out a person’s little idiosyncrasies, like popping in his mouth guard (“so I don’t forget”) before the first fumble. By number 10, she will have learnt not to offer a running commentary during rumpy-pumpy.
After 10 lovers, paranoia about one’s naked body disappears, and chatting to the opposite sex no longer unnerves. With any luck, out of 10 lovers, at least one will be great and inspire confidence in oneself, and thus in relationships.
By the tenth “friend”, even the most overprotective parents won’t pose questions like “are your intentions honourable?”. By then, too, nosy friends will have stopped studying each new candidate for sinister perversions or bunny-boiling tendencies.
If 10 has been deemed a good rule of thumb when it comes to admitting to past lovers, I should point out that some of us would rather die than discuss (let alone list) our exes with our present partner.
It was a lesson girls learnt at finishing school, like getting out a sports car without showing too much leg. Bad girls did, and talked about it; good girls did, and kept mum. These charm schools did not wish to promote goody-goody Victorian morality, they just wanted to maximise students’ chances of bagging an eligible bachelor: numerous exes would intimidate, but secrets would titillate the chinless wonder with a country pile but without a clue.
Perhaps it is best to accept Matt Warren’s advice, which is that “there should be no upper or lower limit to the number of lovers one can admit to; that would be too prescriptive. The essential thing is the state of your current relationship. And if your partner does ask, bear in mind how the information you share will affect them.”
In other words, lie.