How much "history" is too much for your S/O to have?

Children, former alcoholic/drug user, multiple divorces, history of stabbing exes.

I don’t count my past sex partners and I don’t count those of people I am in relationship with. I never even think about it.

After all, what is past is past. Your partner can’t change their past to suit you.

I generally would not date someone who had been close to a family member or a good friend. I did it once (in high school) and it was weird and messy.

I never even think about what or who my exes are getting it on with.

Life is too short to dwell on these things.

@marinelife I’m confused, when you mean “close” to a familiy member or friend, do you mean like intimate close?

Years ago I had a woman friend in her late 20’s who told me honestly that she had been with more than 150 men. She had stopped counting at 100. We were just friends so it didn’t matter but, had I been interested, that would have been too much history for me. 10 is fine. I don’t know where the exact line is. Apparently it is somewhere between those two data points.
The past is the past but the large number means something. It could be: she is fickle, or has a history of getting intoxicated and binging, or does not put a value on sex or fidelity or… It doesn’t even mean she was GIB. If she was, there would have been boyfriends who hung around a while – at least for a second or third date.
None of the possibilities were what I was looking for in a relationship..

@Blackberry What if that SO has a history with a close friend or relative of yours? was the question I was answering.

@marinelife Oh, oops lol.

I wouldn’t date a man who…
has children
has been abusive
has an STD
is in or has been involved with gangs
is a Republican
has messy situations with ex’s
Edited: Someone who has no education, skills, or job prospects. Thanks @worriedguy

@Facade I guess that knocks me out of the running. I’ll have to get my Crips tattoo taken off my butt. ;-)

Please add “someone who has no education, skills, or job prospects” to your excellent list.

I really don’t give a shit how many people my partner has been with before me. Whether he engaged in some kind of sex work would only bother me if it had been out of desperation or self-hatred; if it was a positive experience I might not love it but I’m sure I’d come around. The how and why are waaaaay more important than the what and how many.

Prior sexual history doesn’t bother me unless it comes packaged with a disease.
At this point, I’m not interested in long-term monogamy, so I’ll let somebody I’m dating know that much – but otherwise, everybody’s past can stay where it belongs.

@nikipedia @Blueroses Would it really not bother you if the person you were considering dating said he/she had 150 partners?

(I’m talking about someone young, not an old guy – like me.)

There’s a pretty good chance you won’t be the last partner of someone who has had 150 partners.

No @worriedguy, it honestly would not. People go through phases in their lives. Sometimes promiscuity is a way of compensating for something they weren’t able to deal with at the time. If I trust the person enough to become intimate, I trust my judgement of the situation.

@worriedguy, in the right context, I really think I would be ok with it. My main concern with sex is making sure that both parties are ok and getting what they want out of it, so if this person had found 149 people before me who were having a mutually enjoyable sexual experience, that sounds fine.

I’m with @cockswain on this. That number is an important data point. Odds are very high that person will have many other partners to come. You cannot expect the person to change immediately. If you’re just “doing the nasty” then it does not matter. Bang away. The question was for S/O. In my dictionary that stands for “significant other”. At 150 partners, the chances of you being “significant” to the other party are greatly reduced.

My point @worriedguy is that I agree with you to a point. If it’s somebody who will bed anything that moves at any available opportunity, the chance that I’d be interested in him anyway as a potential partner is zero. If, however it is somebody whom I’ve gotten to know and I accept the reasons for previous promiscuous behavior, I won’t hold his past against him.

Fortunately, my wife and I met right after high school and neither of us had an extensive track record of being with other people. End of this story.

I have a neighbor female friend that was a stripper in her early 20s. This occupation has ruined her life and I understand your thinking about strippers.

I once worked with a guy that kept a little black book of not girls phone number, but names and dates of girls he had “scored with”. At last count, the numbers were between 350 and 400. I did not have any respect for this person.

Sometimes, too much prior information can be deadly to a new relationship.

If I had to start all over again, would I want to know the sexual background of my prospective partner? At the age of 67, I say NO WAY.

I understand where “promiscuity” comes from. I know what people are trying to do when they have a lot of partners. It isn’t about having fun. It is about being desperate to find a reason to feel good about oneself. Sometimes it is about being desperate to find a reason to stay alive. Every sexual conquest is another person who finds you attractive and desirable. Another little patch on the ragged quilt of self esteem. Unfortunately, there’s not much left of the quilt, so the patches keep falling off.

Most promiscuous people want to be accepted for who they are rather than for whether they put out or not. But if they can’t get that acceptance, they’ll put out as the next best thing. This is not something you think about. It’s just something you do. You’re just trying to feel good, and I mean good as in comparison to depression, not good as in high.

A lot of people with bipolar disorder lead promiscuous lives and many of those who don’t think about it all the time. They often end up in sex addiction programs.

I have also found that even if they people aren’t all that promiscuous, the sex means something much more intense for them than it seems to for normal people. In any case, the people I’ve been meeting since I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar seem to share this need. It’s as if we can tell who we are without even knowing.

In the past, I think it would have bothered me to become friends with a promiscuous person. But now I understand, and it doesn’t bother me at all. I’ve found that the acceptance we give each other is enormously healing. It doesn’t matter what are numbers are—there can be people who are obsessed with sex who have only had one partner. What matters is what drives us, and the understanding of what drives us.

Unfortunately, most people will deny that being wildly promiscuous is either wrong or evidence of an addiction or illness. They might consider it a game to find out how many “scores” they can make. They might call themselves sex-positive or something like that. They seek to deal with the social perception of promiscuity. That’s nice and all, but I think that there is a deeper pain that we need to deal with if we are to have any hope of learning how to be happy with ourselves and to believe we are worth anything.

This is all to say that numbers don’t scare me any more. What matters is why people have had the partners they have had, and what they have learned from it. If it is an issue of self-esteem, then it matters what they are doing about that.

I have met the people I have met seemingly at a point of change. A point where they are ready to become a different person. I don’t know if I meet them because they are ready to change, or if meeting them catalyzes change in them. I do know that we support each other (platonically), and through these friendships, we seem to be able to make a lot of progress in becoming who we are and who we would rather be.

@tedd I am curious what your age is. I think past the age of 30 or so, a lot of this flies out the window. At my age (mid fifties) two partners a year from the age of 18 means well over 70. And I am also curious why the two virgins you’ve had sex with seem to be “yours” in perpetuity? They can’t go onto have happy active sex lives?

My limits would have to be focused on whether they had been a sex worker of any sort, or were actively having sex with any other men while involved with me. The rest is history. Any other concerns would be filtered through style and preferences. If she were into a kink I wasn’t comfortable with, that would be a lack of compatabiliyy differnent from her history.

@Blueroses Let’s do some math here. Say the person is 26 and started when they were 17 – (So nobody can be accused of statutory rape). If they had 150 partners in 9 years and we distribute it evenly that comes to 17 partners per year – or a new one every 3 weeks. That does not bode well for relationship longevity. If they had a relationship that lasted longer than 3 weeks then the math means they most likely were double timing or triple timing. That also does not bode well for a “significant” relationship.
It is not impossible to find a gem but the odds are stacked against you if you are looking in a place where many others have looked and discarded.

Just for the record, I’m a relatively low number guy. I can remember and name every person I’ve been with – even through the fog of time and age. Clearly, they all were significant. I’m glad.

@worriedguy The math isn’t necessarily distributed that way. Really, I’m not entirely disagreeing with you here, but it can also be as @wundayatta is explaining. It could have been a period of a year or two at an early age with multiple partners every week. That could have been for any number of reasons, again, as @wundayatta said, to compensate for never feeling loved, to counteract low self esteem… etc. It’s the current person I’m interested in. If that behavior was 10 years ago, I don’t care. If he still spreads his seed in every field, he can stay out of mine.

@Blueroses If we are talking over 40 and the behavior was 10 years ago and stopped, Great! I can look past it. But, I’d want to see a blood test first. Hep A,B, C + others are too much baggage for me.
“Significant” means someone you intend to stay with for a long time and relationships are hard. There are so many other fish in the sea. Why stack the deck against you from the start? The odds of success are greater if both people feel significant.

@worriedguy Fortunately we are all free to make our own judgement calls. As you say, there are plenty of people in the dating pool who match your criteria. I don’t necessarily see it as stacking the cards against you. Somebody who’s already been through that period may be less likely to think it’s an answer to mid-life crisis down the road.

@Blueroses “Somebody who’s already been through that period may be less likely to think it’s an answer to mid-life crisis down the road.” On the other hand, someone who went though it might decide they want to do it again. After all, they did it once already.
You never know.
All other things being equal, I’d pick the <20 person over >200 partner. Less baggage.

Thank goodness there is a spectrum. There’s someone for everyone.

No such thing. It’s incredibly arrogant to think that what they did before they even met me has anything to do with our own relationship.

@zenvelo I’ll be 26 in August. I suppose at some point it won’t bother me in my head anymore, I’ve only been sexually active for around 10 years so I guess figuratively I’m still new to it….. It’s not so much that the virgins are mine forever or anything like that, in fact I fully understand they’ll obviously move on once/if it doesn’t work out. But it still bugs me for some reason to think about. Like something that was “yours” is now not.. if that makes any sense.

@worriedguy @Blueroses I can agree with both of your arguments. My own number has been a bit of an embarrassment for me sometimes (though its nowhere remotely close to 150). My last partner was a virgin, and while I was a good 5 and a half years older my larger number was a huge point of friction. But a huge chunk of my number was piled on in probably a 3–4 year span, out of my entire ~10 year span of sexual activity. A wild phase if you will. I’m no longer that person so my number doesn’t really reflect me as much as you might think…......... At the same time though if it were someone around my age, or even several years older.. and their number was 150.. That would definitely raise red flags in my head as to the loyalty, or personality of this person, and how they might act if I became involved with them.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I agree with that in theory. Past is past, it doesn’t involve me (unless it was like a friend or family member or something)...... But at a certain point a number of partners, or a past lifestyle or profession would be a barrier I wouldn’t be able to pass….. at least with a SO.

@tedd I have a pretty high threshold for all things done whether taboo or not especially if a person regrets it and has changed so there wouldn’t be much (barring eating babies or something) that would prevent me from being with a person. Certainly nothing having to do with sexual stuff. Unless they raped people for quite some time.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Hence the point of the question, to see where people stand on it :)

And I think we can all agree…. baby eating is bad…. lol

depends on how you cook them

@Simone_De_Beauvoir No such thing. It’s incredibly arrogant to think that what they did before they even met me has anything to do with our own relationship

I get what you’re saying, but really think the passage of time between whatever “objectionable” behavior and the present very much factors in. If I say I quit smoking and someone asks for how long, there is a huge difference between saying two weeks and three years. I wouldn’t necessarily condemn someone as bad relationship material if she has 150 partners if she has only had one for, say, the previous 5–10 years. No reason to not think people can’t change, but foolish to think a past pattern of behavior is unconnected to likelihood of future potential behavior (no, I’m not calling you foolish). I certainly would not just take someone at their word that they have changed unless the passage of time and her actions support that claim.

I’m pretty understanding of a person’s past and realize that not everyone is proud of their past. I understand a lot of people change and want to be far removed from it. My main thing is if they are a partying type, avid drug user or just a user in general and I’m not into any substance abuse at all. Also if they are abusive. I live more in the now when it comes to what I won’t approve of.

It’s sad to say this as a mother of 2, but I don’t want to date a man with children.

@cockswain Yeah, I guess I really just meant sexual history.

More than one AVN Award.

My SO’s pasts have never bothered me, probably because I’m the one with the ‘shocking’ past. I had a lot of partners in a very short time (likely a response to being sexually abused for so long in my childhood, a way to take back the power, if you will). Between the ages of 15 and 19 I had over 30 partners. I quite enjoyed it, honestly. It has been a minor issue in a few of my relationships, but never a deal breaker.

In spite of my ‘shocking past’, I have never once cheated in any monogamous relationship. Never. I just chose not to have many monogamous relationships during that time. I got married at 19, and was faithfully married for 17 years. Got divorced and ended up marrying the very first guy I dated after that. Haven’t cheated on him, and never plan to. My past =/= my present, or my future.

The only things that would bother me about a partner’s past would be non-consensual things like rape or pedophilia.