It’s the summer before Megan’s senior year of college, and she and her three friends are hanging out around the picnic table on her back porch, having the “I can’t believe we’re about to graduate” talk.
The conversation soon turns to sex, and the four of them decide to make sex lists to see how many men they’ve slept with over the years. The only problem? Megan, now a 26-year-old radio producer who has slept with 19 guys, accidentally leaves the list on the table when they’re finished — and her mom finds it later that day.
“It was so embarrassing,” recalls the Asbury Park, NJ, resident, whose name has been changed for privacy reasons. “My mom brought it over to me and asked me what it was, and I lied and told her it was a list of people I’d made out with in college.”
Her mom was not convinced.
“She just shook her head and gave me total judgment eyes,” says Megan, who now keeps track of the men she’s bedded in her head. Her story is an increasingly common tale. Most recently, Lindsay Lohan’s 36-person “sex inventory,” which she wrote as part of her Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step recovery program, was revealed to the press; it included stars Justin Timberlake, Adam Levine and Colin Farrell.
And though not all listmakers get exposed, a la Megan and LiLo, experts say that more and more 20- and 30-somethings are keeping tabs on their trysts in private.
“Millennials are delaying marriage more, which means they’re sleeping with more people before they settle down — so more are choosing to keep written lists since it’s harder to keep track otherwise,” says Emily Morse, a sex and relationship expert and host of the podcast Sex With Emily.
But what’s so appealing about writing down your romps that could possibly be worth the risk of being discovered?
For starters, there’s the obvious health precaution. It’s always a good idea to know who your partners are in case of various STDs. But more interestingly, your sex list is much more than a bulleted list of your lovers — it can act as a visual timeline of your major life choices.
“What people don’t realize is that who you sleep with represents what you believed and where you were in life at the time. So you can use your list to analyze your past behavior, look for potentially problematic patterns, and, thus, make better decisions in the future,” explains Rachel Sussman, a New York City-based relationship therapist and author of “The Breakup Bible.”
Scott Muska, a freelance writer from Bed-Stuy, can get behind that logic. The 26-year-old keeps his sex list on Evernote in his iPhone, recording all 41 women he’s slept with, including Ashley, who took his virginity, four Katies and two Sarahs. He says he frequently looks back on it to analyze how he’s grown and changed as a person.
During one such couch session, he realized that whenever he gets out of a long-term relationship, he tends to pressure the women he’s dating into getting serious more quickly because he’s still subconsciously in relationship mode.
“Now I’m like, ‘Oh yeah . . . sometimes it’s just a more casual thing,’ and I’m really trying to be more cognizant of that,” he says.
For others, making a sex list is more about the nostalgia factor.
“I keep a list in my journal called ‘My Sex List: Sorry to Anyone Who Might Find This,’ as a way to remember all of my funny stories,” reveals Julie, an educator from the Upper West Side whose name has been changed to keep her identity private.
“I make up nicknames for each guy, like British James or Max 21, and then I’ll write little anecdotes next to each one if something funny happened, like, ‘Forgot boxers in bed.’ It makes me laugh!” says the 27-year-old.
Muska’s on board with that logic, too: “Sex is one of the greatest things in the world, and sometimes I worry that I’ll forget about someone who was nice enough to let me have sex with her at least once,” he muses.
On an even headier level, experts say that reminiscing has its psychological perks, too. Namely, it makes you feel like you’ve lived your life well.
“Most people regret the things they didn’t do, not the things they did. So even if some of your partners fall under the ‘what was I thinking’ category, you’ll likely be happier just knowing that you tried, rather than sitting in your apartment with takeout,” explains Christie Hartman, Ph.D., a Denver-based dating and relationship expert and author of “Changing Your Game.”
But when you focus on the number of people you’ve slept with — not on your patterns or your memories of the experience — the psychological benefits of keeping a sex list go out the window. And that’s primarily because your “sex number” is a very polarizing topic.
“What happens is people become ashamed or proud of their number, be it high or low, and they start to believe that it defines them in some way,” says Morse.
Alyssa, a book editor from Prospect Heights who’s requested a name change for professional reasons, used to keep her sex list in her phone. But now, the 29-year-old intentionally doesn’t keep a list — though she knows she’s slept with around 35 guys.
“I’d pass up on sleeping with nice guys because I didn’t want my number to get any higher, even though I knew it was silly reasoning,” she reflects. Eventually, she concluded that her logic was making her miss out on new experiences, so she stopped keeping a list altogether.
Similarly, Megan says that another reason she and her friends made the list in her backyard on that fateful day was to combat high-number guilt.
“It was reassuring to know that we’d all slept with our fair share of guys; it made us feel validated and normal,” she explains.
On the flip side, Julie says that another reason she started keeping her list is that she thought her number was too low.
“Most of my friends had slept with over 15 people, so once I got to 15, I started a list to feel like I was keeping up with them, as lame as that sounds. I wanted to feel like I was on their level, and writing it down made it official,” says Julie, who’s now up to 17 men.
Either way, Morse cautions that getting all twisted over your number is never a good idea.
“A better way to approach it is to ask yourself questions about your behavior during the deed,” she advises. “Did you speak up for what you wanted? Did you use protection? That’s where you can truly evaluate your growth,” she emphasizes.
Ultimately, if you do choose to keep a list, be careful. Yes, it’s therapeutic, but if it gets into the wrong hands? Disaster.
Luckily, Megan didn’t call hers “my sex list,” but she still replays the embarrassing situation in her head.
“I’m happy I made one, because it made me focus on a really important and often overlooked issue. But I still can’t believe my mom found it — I’m pretty much scarred for life!”