Why men ALWAYS exaggerate the number of sexual partners they’ve had

A FAMOUS Swedish model established an accepted ‘average’ for sexual partners for heterosexual women of seven, and 13 for heterosexual men. But, clearly, those numbers don’t add up. If there are roughly the same number of heterosexual men and women in the world, you would expect the average number of partners for both to be roughly similar.

Deliciously, there is maths to explain this discrepancy. Women tend to count by listing their partners by name (they ‘enumerate’). Although this is usually accurate, it’s easy to forget one (or two), which explains why women are prone to underestimating. Men, on the other hand, are much more likely to tot up partners in random groupings (they ‘estimate’ — for example: ‘five a year for the past four years’), which makes them more likely to overestimate.

TIP: It’s a bad idea to get hung up about the number of notches on a partner’s bedpost because, even if you’re both trying to be honest, neither of your figures is likely to be true.