Dear Readers,

After five weeks of limbo, my e-mail seems to be working again! (For those of you who missed my lament in a recent issue, it wasn’t working all last month.) Thanks to those of you who took the time to send your comments to me by snail mail –the Express forwarded them to me and I’m working through them in the next few columns. First, let’s go back to the gentleman whose new lady friends always seem to want to know (and are subsequently shocked to hear) the number of sexual partners he’s had:

My instincts tell me it’s something about "Puzzled" himself that’s eliciting the women’s question, and that, deep down, he knows what it is. Perhaps he’s lousy in bed (didn’t he protest a little too much to the contrary in his original letter?) and his partners are delicately probing to see whether ignorance might provide an excuse for his disconnectedness.

I also have to dispute the suggestion that large numbers of partners or "knowing his way around a woman’s body" equal better sex. Sex is a matter of compatibility, empathy, openness, and creativity, not technique. I’ve had wonderful sex with inexperienced partners and terrible sex with those who’d had many other partners. Lovemaking is an expression of connection, not "skill," and clearly that’s lacking for "Puzzled" –or his partners wouldn’t keep asking a question that puzzles him while refusing to explain why. I think the focus on numbers is his, not theirs.

–Oakland

I am interested in a man’s attitudes about being with other partners over the years. At what synthesis of character, if any, has he arrived? I don’t ask how many partners he has had but casual questions about relationships and sex. If he expresses his ideas about his sexual past as trophies or shows fascination with sexual detailing, then I am gone. I have been with a few sex addicts and/or men whose views about sex are way too shallow for me. I can talk about my sexuality and needs openly, but I don’t see a place in maturity for describing sex with past partners, who was a good "fuck," or kinds of experimentation. I am determined to find someone who has synthesized their experiences into why they value monogamy. I have seen some very healthy monogamous relationships and that’s for me.

I extracted a promise of monogamy from my husband before I married him, but his tales of the past should have shown me that he had not arrived at that value yet and might never.

—Elaine

About asking a man how many partners he’s had: I actually don’t care anymore. Perhaps there was a time when I was more insecure about my own sexual experience and was curious and wanted to compare myself to others, but now I rarely ask. When I do, it’s of someone I’m very close to, someone I’m dating seriously/long- term, not just for casual sex. And then, I ask basically for fun because it can be an interesting topic and a good way to get to know someone better through conversation. And I must admit that in a small way I ask in order to impress them (!) since when I ask, they often ask me back and I frequently have had more partners than they have. Honestly, I have "kept score," as your writer put it. I am very confident and I find that my friends (female and especially male) are very comfortable and not at all judgmental about it. I’ve been told that a certain kind of sexual confidence is very attractive and I’ve been around and learned a lot, you know? When I do ask a guy such a question, I’m still sensitive enough not to brag or make the man feel insecure if he’s had fewer partners than I. I’m very tactful– that’s most important.

As far as asking for health reasons, it’s pointless. You just have to use condoms and get tested if that makes you feel better.

I can’t say I’ve met a man who’s admitted to having so many partners that it has made me uncomfortable. One guy I dated had had over 100-200 partners (he lost count, and I believe him as he does have somewhat of a sex addiction, including prostitutes), but it didn’t bother me. It all goes back to how adequate I feel. I found it rather amusing in a sad way and as long as he found me sexy and "good in bed" (which he did), that was all that mattered. And of course, we were safe. When he started to get whiny about using condoms, I dumped him.

–Straight 38 -Y-O Female

Thanks, good correspondents, for your two cents’ worth. (Come to think of it, inflation if nothing else has surely made your opinions worth far more– at least, they are to me!) Just one comment, spurred by the fact that two of you referred to the notion of sex addiction: There’s far from a professional consensus as to what might constitute "sex addiction," and it’s all too easy to label someone a sex addict whose values about sex (especially frequency and the relative importance of sexual activity in one’s life) are different from our own. More about that in a future column.