When it comes to sharing your number of sexual partners, some people fess up and others lie. According to a recent study, a third of Americans have lied about their number of sexual partners.
Why do men and women lie about their sex history? The answer may surprise you.
They don’t want to hurt their partner’s feelings
Whether it’s where you want to go for dinner or how many people you’ve had sex with, lying isn’t good for your relationship. It creates a slippery slope of secrets and can ultimately lead to distrust. And while the truth may hurt at first, being honest about infidelity is the only way to build a healthy and long-lasting relationship.
In studies that involve self-reported sexual behavior, men typically report more partners than women. This has been blamed on men exaggerating their tally, and women understating theirs. But a 2003 study published in the Journal of Sex Research found that when students filled out questionnaires attached to what they thought was a polygraph machine (it wasn’t), men and women reported the same number of sexual partners on average.
Researchers believe that this reflects the pressure to conform to social expectations in reporting behaviors that might be stigmatized, such as multiple sexual partners for women. It’s a phenomenon known as social desirability bias.
Women are pressured to report a higher number of partners than men. This is because of a gender stereotype that says men are more promiscuous than women.
This is the reason why women lie about their sex partners. They don’t want to hurt their partner’s feelings by revealing how many people they have slept with.
When researchers ask participants how many sexual partners they have had in their lifetimes, female students tend to overreport their numbers by adding one or two more partners than their male counterparts. But when the students were not hooked up to a polygraph machine, they gave more honest answers.
In a recent study, more than half of respondents who were in a relationship lied about the number of their past sexual partners. A third of them shared their digits within the first six months of the relationship, and 40% did so in the first three months. One in five said they only disclosed their number because their partner asked them to.
For decades, women have been falsely labeled as liars when it comes to their sexual history. In fact, it’s men who lie more often about how many people they’ve slept with, according to a recent survey. The findings are not surprising to Lux Alptraum, who’s spent the past two years researching why women lie about sex.
Despite the gender stereotypes, most studies agree that men and women report similar numbers of sexual partners. However, when study participants thought they were hooked up to a fake lie detector, women added an extra partner to their answer, while men decreased theirs.
The results suggest that women are more afraid of being perceived as sluts, leading them to lie about their number of sex partners. But if you really want to have healthy and long-term relationships, it’s important to be honest about your sexual history. And the first step is to stop telling lies that hurt your loved ones’ feelings.
According to research, women lie more often than men about their number of sex partners. They tend to downplay their past sexual experience because they don’t want to hurt their partner’s feelings. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to inflate their number of sex partners. They may do this because they want to appear macho and dominant.
In a study conducted in 2003, researchers found that when students filled out an anonymous questionnaire while being told they were attached to a fake polygraph machine, men and women both reported the same number of sex partners. This was a shock, since male and female participants in other studies have usually reported that men had more sexual partners than did women.
Although it’s unclear how much of the discrepancy is due to different estimating methods and how much is simply lying, it is clear that most people are not honest when asked about their number of sexual partners. It’s important to remember that honesty is key in any relationship, including romantic relationships.