We absolutely love the remake of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It. No surprise as we are fans of the 1986 original too. The story of how the lead character, Nola Darling, struggles to pick one of her three lovers, so ends up dating all three at once, is exciting and great to watch, but it’s hard to see how that scenario would play out in real life.

How many sexual partners have you had? And would you tell your partner?
She’s Gotta Have It/Netflix

To play on stereotypes, black men are not known to favour openly sexually voracious women when it comes to picking a wife, unless the play is for him. What’s that popular phrase? “I want a lady in the streets, but a freak in the sheets”! Or are we mistaken? Perhaps we are much more sexually progressive than we realise. While the idea of sleeping with multiple partners at the same time, like Nola, may be a bit too much to stomach, both for the men in our lives and ourselves, we decided to ask instead, a random sample of married women, how many sexual partners they’d had before they got married and how open they had been with the numbers with their husbands/partners.

How many sexual partners have you had? And would you tell your partner?
She’s Gotta Have It/Netflix

Names have been changed to protect the innocent/or guilty

Yolanda, 44, married with three children

I had six sexual relationships before I met my husband; is that a long list? I feel pretty happy with this number as we have a great sexual relationship and so I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything.

My husband knows all about my sexual history. I didn’t feel I had anything to hide, having said that, if the number was nearer 20, he may not have married me! On the other hand, I have no desire to know about his sex life before we got together! I am rather jealous so I would probably have to kill them all! Just kidding. I don’t know how he would feel about this, but I would have preferred if I was his first and me his.

 

Pamela, 40, married with 2 children

I’ve had two previous sexual relationships before getting together with my husband and yes, he is fully aware of this number. I had no qualms about telling him as they are exes, in fact I volunteered the information, he didn’t as ask at all. I know that if the number was higher, I probably wouldn’t have shared the information so freely.

We have a great sexual relationship, always have, and in truth, I wish he’d have been my first.

 

Debbie, 42, married with two children

I met my husband in my early twenties and I’d only had two relationships before that. While we were on a break, I had a sexual relationship with someone else. Today, I regret this as it was obviously a rebound scenario. My husband knows about this but because we were on a break it wasn’t an issue. I feel that if the number of past lovers was high, my husband wouldn’t have been able to overlook it and we wouldn’t have gotten married.

 

Jamie, 41, married with 2 children

My first sexual encounter didn’t happen until I was in my early twenties so I consider myself to be a late starter. I’d had eight sexual partners before my husband and after a couple of years into the relationship he seemed really keen to know how many sexual partners I’d had, which struck me as a bit rich as snippets of conversation led me to believe that he hadn’t been a monk by any means before he met me! I was honest and told him and I think it bugged him a little bit. Now that I think about it, we never got around to him, but to be fair, it would be a complete turnoff to hear that I’d slept with more people than him.

 

Kemi, 38, married with 1 child

To be honest, I kind of lost count, none of them were memorable. I can tell you it’s between 15 and 20 if that helps? Needless to say, that I have had to be rather economical with the truth with my husband as I know it won’t go down well. We’ve been married seven years now and we have a great sex life. But who’s to say whether I would be so content if he had been my first? All I know is that I will be taking that particular secret to the grave with me!

So, it looks like we are not all frustrated Nola Darlings if we listen to these women. Having a lot of sexual partners still doesn’t go down too well with the menfolk, even in these feminist times. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue. How many lovers have you had and what number is too many, when it comes to past sexual partners?

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