The curious question that many men and women ask each other when they first meet or if they’re friends whatever the case may be, ” What is your number?” As in how many people have you slept with up until I asked you this question. Do women really decrease their number for the sake of their reputation and do men really increase their number for an ego boost(although that makes them a liar, so I don’t know which is better) ? I think people like to compare their sex lives with each other and secretly hope that the opposite person says something similar to them or worst, in order for one to feel “okay.” There has been some research regarding this, hit the jump!
Steph B

The fact is, there’s a shadowy numeral that stalks all adults to the grave and, for many (some would say the lucky ones), the secret will be buried with them.
Others are less coy about the figure. Coronation Street actor Bill Roache claims to have slept with 1,000 women, DJ Tony Blackburn 500, while Lynn Barber, the journalist and author of An Education, said on Desert Island Discs that she had slept with ‘probably 50 men’ during two terms at Oxford. ‘It was quite good going,’ she reflected.
Nick Clegg, displaying less sangfroid, told GQ he had slept with ‘no more than 30’ and has never lived the confession down.
The film What’s Your Number tells the story of a young woman, played by Anna Faris, who realises, to her horror, that her tally of lovers (20) is double that of any of her friends. So she decides she should try to pick out a Mr Right from her exes, in order not to bump up her tally.
The film draws on research that reports married women, on average, tend to have notched up ten partners, but when the number tops 20, a woman’s chance of tying the knot recedes.
The notion of a perfect ‘ten’ was reinforced recently when a new study revealed this was the figure both men and women believed to be the correct answer to the thorny question regarding past loves.
Fewer than that number was felt to suggest a regrettable lack of experience (and also, possibly, of desirability), while many more ran the risk of appearing promiscuous.
Back here in the non-ideal world, however, the numbers game can be a mite more complicated.

What of my 51-year-old friend, who has amassed a modest three partners over his lifetime? Should we deem him clumsy in the bedroom, or does the fact he’s maintained three long-lived relationships reveal a skilled lover, who’s good at keeping passion alive?
Does the man who’s had ten one-night-stands have a claim to more experience, or is he demonstrating less commitment? And how do you categorise one female contemporary, who boasted of bedding 17 men in her first year at Oxford, but then went on to wed a fellow student and has now been married for 22 years?
Last time the 40-something couple were spotted by a fellow acquaintance, she reported they were ‘smooching like teenagers’.
Many of the people I know have one crazy period of sexual abandon, which distorts their tally. Often this happens at university, where many a romantic high hope is dashed on an ill-sprung narrow college bed and chased by a savage hangover.

Read more [Source]