I never wanted to know my now-wife's "number" although she offered to tell me many times. Logically, intellectually, I know it doesn't matter who she was with. She's with me now, she chose me, yada yada. But deep down I am an insecure baby man, and I know that, so I didn't want to think about it. I mean she was married before, she'd talked about some ex boyfriends, so I knew of at least 5 or 6 partners - I didn't think she was a virgin or anything. But my number is exactly 4: I lost my virginity at 15 to a girl I went on to date for 2 years, then I met my first wife, who I was with for 9 years. When I was single again I dated a bit and had one non-exclusive frequent hookup partner. Then I met my now-wife, so although I had a lot of sex in my life, it wasn't with a lot of people.

Well one time a few years in, we were drinking and she was trying to get me to guess, and I repeated I didn't want to know. She said "it's not even bad, you'll probably be happy" and she blurted it out. It was over 20. I was pretty taken aback because from her stories she was a serial monogamist, like me. I couldn't get the math to make sense. "You were with so-and-so for 6 years, then what's-his-face for two years..." etc. She said "Yeah, well I had one summer where I was a bit of a slut."

That affected me. Just the image of her going around fucking a different dude every weekend is so unlike her and everything she's ever talked about. I played it cool and didn't disparage her or anything, because like I said, in theory I'm a sex-positive, do whatever makes you happy as long as you're not hurting anybody, kind of guy. It's been like 5 years since she told me so I'm not sitting around butthurt about it, but yeah, I really wish I didn't know.