What's your number? And why you shouldn't ask or tell about it

A few days ago I was reading the August issue of the Cosmopolitan Finland magazine. Although I’m usually not taking cosmo-girl talk very seriously, in this issue there was something that I found so ridiculous that it almost made me write their Facebook page to hire editors that have something else than hairspray and Aperol Spritz bubbles in their heads.

The Cosmo advice I was taken aback by was that in case your current bf asks you how many guys you’ve slept with, the rule of thumb is to divide the actual number by four. So to lie that you’ve slept with a fourth of the people you have if telling the truth.

First of all – have you ever been asked? I certainly haven’t. And it has never been in my interest to know with how many people have my dates or boyfriends slept before me. What kind of person asks this from their partner anyway? I can’t picture a single positive outcome that somebody would gain by knowing the amount of people that their special one has shared sexual experiences with.

Second – why would you lie? It’s probably since I’m such a poor liar that nobody would believe my attempt of lying anyway, but I think that the rule of thumb that works best in a relationship is don’t tell lies.

Third – the number doesn’t tell anything from the person carrying it. It’s the past. Even though the number was 120, the person carrying it might have had some serious good time while being 16 years old and afterwards slept with only a few. As well, if the number is 1 or 2, the person might still be a crazy sex addict but happy enough to have found the one person who’ve handled it. So what’s the outcome of knowing the number? Misleading.

And finally – if you still decide to share your number with anyone, be true to yourself and your past sex buddies. If you follow your gut and make choices by your own free will, there should be nothing to be ashamed of. And isn't keeping a number so 1990's anyway?

Post by Sally

Get Lucky

Not getting laid sucks. It simply sucks. Getting laid regularly is honestly one of the things I miss the most about relationships.

Like any girl in her twenties with a healthy sex drive, I need sex. I need to have sex every now and then. And I’m not talking about any incontrollable sex addiction here, but just basic human needs.

Since I’m not really into random one-night-stands, the situation unfortunately sometimes evolves into a Big Issue. A week without is fine, but in two I start to feel it. In a month it will start to get on my nerves. In three months, which I would’ve reached in a few days… Well, let’s just say that it's impossible to ignore anymore.

Making things worse, it’s as if the whole topic was a taboo. Although in our group of friends we’re not usually too shy when it comes to talking about our sex lives, this is the one topic we never discuss.

And I quite don’t get it – why? Out of sight (or talks), doesn’t here mean that the issue would be out of mind.

On the contrary, I've realized that being all open about it might actually help. The other day, a few girl colleagues and I were sitting over some after work drinks, and the genie was let out of the bottle. We were going through a check on our relationship statuses – “Single”, “Single”, “Single” – when suddenly, one girl blurted out the unmentionable. “Since we’re all single… How long has it been since the last time you had sex?”

At first I was shocked by the outspokenness. And the round of answers was rather miserable, to be honest – “Three months”, “Two and a half months”, “Four fucking months". Luckily, there was one cheerful “Two days, yay!” giving the rest of us a glimpse of hope. Also, it was oddly comforting to realize that the rest of us were all in the same sad boat.

Not getting any really sucks, but I don't think we should get miserable or desperate about it, or to lower our standards and sleep with whomever. Hell no! You might as well be fabulous, for sure that won’t hurt your chances.

Stay strong, girls. 

Post by Jo  

P.S. On Friday, I finally broke my dry season. Finally, finally, I had sex. Fuck yeah.

Open Endings

A problem with undefined relationships is telling when they are over. If you never agreed that you’re together, you can’t really break up either.

I’ve started to recognize that my exquisite yet undefined friends-with-benefits thingy just might be over. Before, it used to be him who contacted me – maybe 1 out of 10 times I would call him. However, the last time we saw each other was over a month ago, and since that I haven’t heard anything from him. A few weeks ago I even got to the point of texting him myself, but to my surprise received no reply.

It’s as if he had simply vanished. And I have absolutely no idea why.

The last time we met, he had needed to see me. He left from a party and came to pick me up to his place. “Because they’re not like you”, he said when I asked why. And all of a sudden, poof! Complete silence, on all medias of communication.

I guess open endings will always take some time to digest. However, I’m positive that quitting longing for that someone will open my eyes for other, fresh and exciting possibilities.

Besides, in a city size of Helsinki, we probably cannot avoid seeing each other forever. I don’t mind, though. The times we were together were simply magnificent, and I have no reason to have any hard feelings. So – maybe we’ll smile, maybe we’ll say hi, maybe we’ll even stop and ask how the other one is doing – or maybe nothing of the above.

Time will tell. But for the moment, I will stop wondering what carried us apart. It’s funny how calm I am about this, but I’ve come to realize that I actually don’t long for his presence anymore.

"Close some doors. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they no longer lead somewhere."

Paulo Coelho

Indeed. And who would not want to go on?

Post by Jo

Is Less actually More?

Last weekend I met a friend of mine, and as all decent-behaving fine ladies do when they meet after a while, we analyzed the current situation of our sex lives, as well as other relationship related issues. Well, my friend told me the most ridiculous thing I had heard by far, or at least that’s what I was thinking when I heard the thing – she told me she only has sex with her boyfriend maximum once a week, since she wants to invest in quality instead of quantity.

I told her she could stop making poor excuses, and admit that three years in a relationship, a dog and a shared laundry bag have affected the intensiveness of her bedroom activity.

However, the more I thought about it, the more sense it started to make. One of the basic assumptions of human behavior in economics is the law of diminishing marginal utility – the more you have a certain good, the less extra utility a unit of the good gives you.  The first glass of wine gives you much more pleasure than the tenth one (though alcohol might be exception since the sufficient supply of it is free and unlimited).

This applies to human contact as well. The more you meet someone, the less special it gets. If you meet a guy rarely, the moments are loaded with expectations, belongingness and happiness. More often you meet, more everydayish it gets. Like if you start having lunch every day in a Michelin starred restaurant instead of your office cafeteria, you’ll get used to the quality of the food, and stop respecting its amazingness of every meal. In the end you start treating the Michelin star restaurant in your mind the same way as you treat the poor office cafeteria.

This applies especially in a situation when dating someone new is starting to get more frequent. After some while of dating the excitement slowly starts to disappear as the relationship starts to stabilize. It becomes everyday. And this is where we are heading with my guy right now. 

Though emotions are the only concept in the world that cannot be explained by science, the laws of social sciences might still have their points to apply in the market of love. I'm not ready to stabilize with my nascent relationship just yet. So taking some distance might actually improve our utility surpluses. I don’t want us to treat each other like office cafeterias. 

Post by Sally