Let me get this out of the way right now.  I love Sex and the City.  You know, the cable TV show.  (I haven’t seen the movie.)  I’ve watched every episode at least a couple of times.  It’s absolutely fascinating and engaging, and not just because (as I was told) many episodes were based on my own book Women & Love.

But I need to get something else out of the way.  Sex and the City also makes me, and I think many other women, crazy.  We love it because it gives us a picture, for many of us the only picture we’ll get in the media, of our lives and all the things we care about.  But it makes me crazy because over and over I want to say, NO!! this is NOT me, not my life, and it never could be.

As Carrie might type on her computer, “In other words, is Sex and the City good for our mental health or bad for it?” 

Take, for example, our friendships.  I’d love to have friends I could hang out with and share everything with the way the four Sex and the City gals do.  But I don’t.  You know why?  BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE THE TIME.  I can’t even imagine having the time to hang out like that. 

And the shoes.  Look, I like nice shoes.  But I can’t imagine buying a closetful of expensive shoes.  And to be quite honest I can’t imagine having much in common with someone whose life revolves around shoes. 

And while I’m at it (and I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts on this) I think I’d get seriously nauseous if the women I spend time with did nothing but talk about relationships.  Don’t we have better things to talk about?

But still, look at the way Sex and the City makes us look at our lives! 

And now it’s happening again.  The issue has come up in the Daily News of how many sexual partners we have had and, of course, how many we should have had.  And many of us think, Too few?  I’m a loser.  Too many?  I’m a slut. 

So what, as Carrie might type, is too many?  What is too few? 

According to the Daily News article (and a condom manufacturer [!!!]), the average woman has had NINE sexual partners.  The average New York gal has had EIGHTEEN partners.  (For what it’s worth, that’s exactly the number of partners Carrie and Charlotte have had over the run of the show.   Miranda had seventeen.  Samantha had over five thousand…no, just kidding; her number was FORTY-ONE men and ONE woman. 

So do all these numbers make you feel more slut-like or loser-like?  Let me shed some light on all of this. 

New York women AREN’T sluttier than women in the rest of the country.  Here’s the truth.  New York women have more sexual partners because they are single longer and have more access to sexual partners.  In almost every case, it is length of singlehood and access to sexual partners (for example, something that’s in short supply for a young woman in a small rural community) that predicts the number of sexual partners a woman will have. 

And let’s put that into perspective.  These numbers tell us that the great majority of women will have between ONE and TWO sexual partners for every YEAR they are single.  These numbers work for both the city mice and the country mice.  These are neither slutty numbers nor loser numbers.  These are NORMAL numbers. 

But suppose your numbers are a lot lower or higher.  WE NEED TO STOP JUDGING OURSELVES.  And we shouldn’t let a TV show do this to us either.  Lot’s of perfectly normal, wonderful, desirable, attractive women go through a period where they just don’t want to be in a relationship.  Down go their numbers.  Lot’s of perfectly wonderful, decent, lady-like women go through a “slutty” period when they explore, experiment, and give themselves a chance to feel their full sexual power.  SO WHAT? 

It’s time we just left ourselves alone.  Yes, if you let yourself be used, that might come back and haunt you.  Yes, you should not leave yourself open to contracting a sexually transmitted disease.  Yes, being along for too long is probably not good for you.  But otherwise, these are all just ways for us to be ourselves. 

One other issue.  My new book WHEN GOOD PEOPLE HAVE AFFAIRS is just out.  Most of us need to read this for one simple reason.  The truth is that if you have had one or two (or more) sexual partners for every year of your being single you will probably have cheated on one of your partners.  At a minimum, you started up with one guy before you’d finished with the previous guy.  I’m not insulting you.  And it may not be true for all of you.  But it is true for most of us. 

So maybe you did a bad thing.  But that didn’t make you a bad person.  What you need to do is find a way to forgive yourself and, most of all, understand why you did what you did.  And you’ll find that in my book. 

What’s more, if you’ve had more than a handful of sexual partners, then there is a good chance that one of your partners cheated on your (or maybe cheated on his partner with you).  And you need to understand and forgive this too. 

And I hope you will. 

Now let me hear from you.  What was your number?  I want to know BOTH how many sex partners you’ve had AND over how many years.  (I want to see if that rough average of one to two partners per year of being single holds for you guys.)  And I want to hear how you feel about that number?  Do you wish you’d had more experience?  Less?  Of a different kind? 

Let’s talk!! 

Posted: Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Category: Relationships, News & Notes
Author: Mira
Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.