I don’t tell guys how many people I’ve slept with. And they always ask. Why is that? Why do they ask a question they really don’t want to the answer to? The truth is that it’s perfectly reasonable for you to extrapolate our situation and assume I generally treat men the same way I treat you. If sleeping together after a few weeks of texting and a few hours of drinks makes you feel okay when it’s me doing it with you you need to be okay with me doing it before you came along.

But they never are. Everyone wants to be the exception, no one wants to be the rule.

So I lie or I evade the question. I appear virginal while giving them what they want in our sex life. I let them delude themselves into thinking they are the only person that part of me comes alive for. They need this, and I don’t understand why. I’d get it if a guy was really conservative himself, I don’t care, you’re allowed to be a prude if you want to be one, but I don’t get the magical thinking of going for a girl who isn’t like that and then being upset about what you knew from the start. I’m sorry you can’t have your cake and eat it too, but I also really can’t believe I have to be the one to tell you how life works.

Men want women’s sexuality, but they can only deal with it when it exists wholly for them. If a woman is sexual about anything other than you in particular, it’s a problem. That’s when she’s a slut.

I asked a friend about this recently. He’s a nice guy — and I say that without irony. He’s a decent person and he treats people well. He isn’t whiny and enraged about women who reject him, he’s not a Bye Felipe candidate, at least in my presence. So, I thought he was a good candidate.

My question was, how many sexual partners would a woman have before you stopped wanting to date her?

He said he thought three was plenty. And his inflection really did emphasize plenty. He’s 30, for reference, and has slept with 17 women. His own number isn’t a factor, he argues, because women are the gatekeepers of sex so of course he’ll try for as many as he can get, while women should try for as few as they can resist.

A few years ago I polled 100 men on whether they’d date someone who slept with them on the first date. 17 had a clear issue with this kind of woman while 75 kind of shrugged their shoulders at it. I think they realize that’s the reality of dating for normal people. If you’re super-conservative you’re probably opting-out of this kind of dating pool to begin with and for everyone else, you get out of it what you put into it. You can’t make demands for people you aren’t willing to follow through with for yourself.

I guess I think about it how I feel about flirting while in a relationship — it’s perfectly harmless but no one wants to hear about it. I’d hate to think about my boyfriend flirting with a woman to pass the time at an airport bar, for instance, but I’ve done the same thing and it was completely harmless. I don’t actually mind if he does it, I just mind thinking about it.

It’s not super fun to think about a guy’s history before me, but how childish, how unreasonable would it be for me to have wanted him to abstain from life, from what he thought was love or adventure or even just living because one day I might come along? No, that’s no fair for me to put on someone else. His past has nothing to do with me, and if I become obsessed with it or it makes me feel bad, it says more about me and my narcissism than it does about him.

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