Can anything good come from telling your partner(s) how many people you've slept with before you met them? Many people would say, "no way." The very idea of revealing that number can be terrifying because they're afraid that they'll be judged for having had too many intimate encounters -- or too few -- and they worry that the information could harm their relationship.
On the most recent episode of the HuffPost Love+Sex Podcast, co-hosts Carina Kolodny and Noah Michelson tackled this question -- and nine other intimate queries -- with the help of Dr. Zhana Vrangalova, a sex expert and professor at New York University.
"[What happens when you reveal your number] depends on what are the attitudes and values of the people involved and what their reactions are going to be," Dr. Vrangalova told Kolodny and Michelson. "My husband has actually had that experience with a couple of his friends and girlfriends. They would share the number and he would be so accepting of whatever the number was that they walked away thinking, Oh my God — I’m not this dirty slut that everyone has been telling me I was. So if you have a positive reaction to that, or your partner has a positive reaction to that, it can be a really empowering and really anti-slut shaming that I think a lot of [people] could benefit from it.”
To hear more about what can happen when you share "your number," as well as questions about everything from "how safe is urinating on someone" to "what should I do if I only want to date 'daddies' and they all think I'm too young for them," listen to the podcast below or head to iTunes to download it:
The HuffPost Love+Sex podcast is produced by Katelyn Bogucki and edited by Nick Offenberg. Additional production by Christine Conetta.
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Have an idea for an episode? Need help with a question about love or sex? Find us on Twitter at @HuffPostPodcast or email us at loveandsexpodcast@huffingtonpost.com.
