My boyfriend says my body count is too high
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My boyfriend and I are stuck on the topic of my body count. I’ve had about 15 partners, which felt right at the time, but he sees hookup culture as harmful. He isn’t religious but holds very traditional views. I feel ashamed when we talk about it—how do I explain my past without guilt?
I am of the professional opinion that body count is a silly metric.
Though it’s presented like some sort of objective data point, it’s often used to shame people. It has no direct connection with your sexual health, the values you hold, or your worth as a human. If the goal behind asking about body count is to understand someone’s character or experiences, there are far better questions we could be asking one another. Not to mention that what qualifies as a “high” body count is entirely subjective and based on personal beliefs, cultural conditioning, and the social norms of the day. I once made a TikTok where I referenced my body count, a number I thought was blatantly high (well above 15), and was met with comments from other women saying mine was practically nothing!
First thing's first: no one's sexual history should ever be weaponised against them.
You don’t need to justify your past (to your boyfriend or yourself)—not with the number of dates you and the person went on, with the quality of the person, or your high sex drive.
That said, I can also empathise with the fact that hearing about a partner’s sexual past can evoke jealousy and discomfort in a monogamous relationship. Jealousy is often irrational—we have no reason to feel that a relationship is threatened by simply knowing our partners have had sex before—but it’s a human response that many people experience. In your case, this might be a learning moment for both of you. Perhaps you’ve discovered there might be boundaries you’d like to set before conversations about one another’s dating history, and it’s important for you each to be honest with yourselves about what you do and don’t want to know.
Sex means different things to different people. For your boyfriend, it seems sex carries significant emotional weight, a form of “giving yourself” to someone that requires trust and commitment. There’s nothing wrong with that perspective at all, but it does feel unfair for him to project those standards onto you, especially when it involves judging the past version of you he didn’t even know. People grow, change, and come to relationships with different experiences.
Part of loving someone is accepting the entirety of who they are, including their past.
That being said, I have to respectfully disagree with some of your boyfriend’s reasoning. I don’t think the women’s sexual freedom movement is to blame for the lack of effort some men bring to dating. Sure, women have become ‘more available’ as we begin to remove shame from female sexuality, but that line of reasoning seems like a very roundabout way to blame women for men’s behavior.
In truth, a lot of the strategizing many guys do to get women to have sex with them is coercive, and I would claim has much more to do with masculinity and rape culture than sex positivity.
But let’s set my opinions aside for a moment, because you asked for advice. It’s awesome you’re able to acknowledge that you don’t regret your past, though it sounds like you’re wrestling with some guilt. Our decisions and interactions have led us to where we are now - we don’t know who we’d be without our past. It may be worth sitting with this question: "Have I always felt this guilt, or is it a new feeling that’s prompted by my boyfriend’s opinions?"
Because sex is so tied to morality in our society, people (especially women) are prone to self-judgement.
We rarely give ourselves grace after having "less than ideal" sexual interactions. Instead of acknowledging what that sexual interaction may have taught us about ourselves, we can become subjected to a shaming voice inside our heads: “you should have known better/done better.”
You’ve described your sexual past as pleasurable, full of experiences that helped you understand what you wanted in a relationship. Isn’t that worth celebrating? How could you have figured those things out without exploring them for yourself? Especially in a society that often fails to provide sex education, the only way many of us learn is through personal experience.
As far as practical advice goes, you should talk to your boyfriend, not necessarily to defend yourself but to express how his comments make you feel. Explain "intent vs impact" to him - even though he may not mean to make you feel bad, he is. You both should work together in coming to a consensus about how you’ll talk about this moving forward.
Regardless of who’s "right" or "wrong", one thing is for certain: you can’t change the past. What you can change is how you communicate and support one another in the present. It may be helpful to remind your boyfriend that who you are today—the person he loves—is shaped by the choices and experiences you’ve had. The same is true for him.
