No matter how many or how few people you've slept with, you've been exposed to A LOT of others
Here’s some information you probably never needed to know – no matter how many people you’ve slept with, chances are you’ve been exposed to hundreds of thousands of others.
A new sex calculator by Lloyds Pharmacy has been designed to give us a rough estimate of how many indirect sexual partners we’ve had, going back six degrees of separation.
You enter in how many people you’ve had sex with, separating them into different age ranges and the calculator then works out on average how many previous sexual partners people in that age range have had. The calculator then does this six more times to see just how far and wide your indirect lovers spread.
Trying to pin down “the average” number of sexual partners women in the UK have had is damn near impossible – reports range from four to eight (and the rest) – but that’s not taking into account specific age, location, how many margaritas you had that night you went out in that dress that makes you look like Christina Hendricks in Mad Men.
Let’s meet in the middle and use six as an example shall we? Let’s also assume the user is a 30-year-old woman who lost her virginity to her 17-year-old boyfriend and has since had one other long-term relationship and a fling with an older man.
From six sexual partners, this imaginary woman (let’s call her Sarah) has actually has 2,200,778 indirect sexual partners. That’s 2.2 million sets of strange genitalia. That’s more than the population of Birmingham, Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff. Combined.
Ickiness aside, the calculator does highlight the oft-maligned subject of sexual health and the importance of practicing safe sex.
In 2014, there were around 440,000 STI diagnoses made in England, the most common of which was Chlamydia – a disease that is easily prevented through the use of a condom.
Excuse us, we’re off to take the longest shower of our lives…