MARLOWE TIGER
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So just how many lovers SHOULD a woman have?
Carla Bruni: Been there, done that and got the nightie
When Carla Bruni revealed that she'd had 15 lovers before she married Nicolas Sarkozy, there was a collective sharp intake of breath.
'What a sl*t!' gasped some people, tut-tutting away. While others, equally shocked, asked: 'Only 15? That's peanuts!'
Am I only the person who thinks 15 is actually about right, if a touch on the high side? I know this might seem a little shocking, and this is not a debate we would have been having in 1955.
But this is the 21st century, and for better or worse, sexual habits have changed dramatically in the past two generations.
I know some women like to save themselves for marriage and stick with the same man through thick and thin for the rest of their lives.
But I've got a friend who did this and, unfortunately, 30 years on, she seems obsessed with sex, absolutely riveted by orgasms and experimentation, with a real prurient fascination.
She once confided that she felt she'd missed out and was always tempted, even though she loved her husband dearly, to go to bed with one other person just once 'to see what it's like'.
There is, she tells me, a constant feeling of 'what might have been'. I think she imagines that everyone except her is swinging from the chandeliers and trying positions that hadn't even occurred to the writer of the Kama Sutra. (For some: yes. For most of us: no.)
She'll never be able to say, like Carla Bruni, that: 'Love lasts a long time, but burning desire - two to three weeks.' Because she just doesn't know it.
In vain do I try to reassure her that in the end, after the initial crazy lust has died down, most married people's sex lives are much of a muchness: she still sees herself as someone who has been deprived.
And, in one way, she's right. She's been deprived of experience. She's been deprived of the knowledge that some men can be fantastic lovers - and yet may not do a thing for you if, fundamentally, you don't fancy them.
And others can be, by the terms of sex magazines, rather hopeless in bed.
But, simply because of something about them, the way their hair curls at the back of their neck or the way they say they love you, can always make you feel weak at the knees when they so much as look at you.
She'll never have experienced men's sexual insecurities or, by trying out several, have discovered that some have raging sex drives and others are rather humdrum.
Of course, Carla Bruni does rather have one over on the rest of us. As she's dated people like Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger and Donald Trump, one assumes she might have had affairs with them, and since all of them must, by their very status, be blessed with huge sexual experience, presumably she's got a pretty high benchmark.
It's unlikely Carla will ever be thinking: 'What might have been.' She's been there, done that and got the nightdress.
But what would be the point of Carla - or anyone else - accumulating more lovers?
Experienced: Carla Bruni is now married to French President Nicolas Sarkozy - were the 15 lovers she had before him too many?
Having, in the Sixties, been made utterly miserable by scores of desperately loveless encounters, I certainly wouldn't advise it.
More than 15, I'd say, and you are starting to demean sex itself.
Remember, if you assume this tally might stretch over 25 years, that's around one sexual partner every two years or so, which isn't exactly the height of promiscuity.
More than 15 partners, however, and it's no longer something special that you do only with the chosen few.
It becomes a debased currency, and it's very difficult to make it special again once you've reduced it to that level.
And it might be difficult for your partner not to feel that he's just one in a long line of conquests. When he finds out, he'll go from feeling like a pearl in your eyes, to feeling like just another bead in a necklace.
Since men's capacity for anxiety about their sexual prowess is limitless, he may also come to believe you're constantly comparing his performance with other men's.
The other thing is that your partner, if he has any idea of the number of people you've slept with, may find it uncomfortable being with your male friends, constantly wondering if you've been to bed with that man or this man.
One woman I know had four couples to supper and realised that before her marriage, she'd slept with every bloke at the dinner table, including her husband's brother.
They were polite enough not to mention it, of course, but it put her in a very difficult predicament.
'Did my husband know? Did their wives know? If their wives had known, would they have been angry and jealous? Nothing was said, but the uneasy feeling was definitely there in the background. I wished I could put the clock back,' she told me.
Carla Bruni isn't a spring chicken. By 40, you should know what's what. Fifteen lovers seems to me reasonable without being shameful.
When it comes to sex in this day and age, we should all be like Goldilocks, with a chance to taste a few bears' horrible breakfasts before deciding on one that's 'just right'.
dailymail
Carla Bruni: Been there, done that and got the nightie
When Carla Bruni revealed that she'd had 15 lovers before she married Nicolas Sarkozy, there was a collective sharp intake of breath.
'What a sl*t!' gasped some people, tut-tutting away. While others, equally shocked, asked: 'Only 15? That's peanuts!'
Am I only the person who thinks 15 is actually about right, if a touch on the high side? I know this might seem a little shocking, and this is not a debate we would have been having in 1955.
But this is the 21st century, and for better or worse, sexual habits have changed dramatically in the past two generations.
I know some women like to save themselves for marriage and stick with the same man through thick and thin for the rest of their lives.
But I've got a friend who did this and, unfortunately, 30 years on, she seems obsessed with sex, absolutely riveted by orgasms and experimentation, with a real prurient fascination.
She once confided that she felt she'd missed out and was always tempted, even though she loved her husband dearly, to go to bed with one other person just once 'to see what it's like'.
There is, she tells me, a constant feeling of 'what might have been'. I think she imagines that everyone except her is swinging from the chandeliers and trying positions that hadn't even occurred to the writer of the Kama Sutra. (For some: yes. For most of us: no.)
She'll never be able to say, like Carla Bruni, that: 'Love lasts a long time, but burning desire - two to three weeks.' Because she just doesn't know it.
In vain do I try to reassure her that in the end, after the initial crazy lust has died down, most married people's sex lives are much of a muchness: she still sees herself as someone who has been deprived.
And, in one way, she's right. She's been deprived of experience. She's been deprived of the knowledge that some men can be fantastic lovers - and yet may not do a thing for you if, fundamentally, you don't fancy them.
And others can be, by the terms of sex magazines, rather hopeless in bed.
But, simply because of something about them, the way their hair curls at the back of their neck or the way they say they love you, can always make you feel weak at the knees when they so much as look at you.
She'll never have experienced men's sexual insecurities or, by trying out several, have discovered that some have raging sex drives and others are rather humdrum.
Of course, Carla Bruni does rather have one over on the rest of us. As she's dated people like Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger and Donald Trump, one assumes she might have had affairs with them, and since all of them must, by their very status, be blessed with huge sexual experience, presumably she's got a pretty high benchmark.
It's unlikely Carla will ever be thinking: 'What might have been.' She's been there, done that and got the nightdress.
But what would be the point of Carla - or anyone else - accumulating more lovers?
Experienced: Carla Bruni is now married to French President Nicolas Sarkozy - were the 15 lovers she had before him too many?
Having, in the Sixties, been made utterly miserable by scores of desperately loveless encounters, I certainly wouldn't advise it.
More than 15, I'd say, and you are starting to demean sex itself.
Remember, if you assume this tally might stretch over 25 years, that's around one sexual partner every two years or so, which isn't exactly the height of promiscuity.
More than 15 partners, however, and it's no longer something special that you do only with the chosen few.
It becomes a debased currency, and it's very difficult to make it special again once you've reduced it to that level.
And it might be difficult for your partner not to feel that he's just one in a long line of conquests. When he finds out, he'll go from feeling like a pearl in your eyes, to feeling like just another bead in a necklace.
Since men's capacity for anxiety about their sexual prowess is limitless, he may also come to believe you're constantly comparing his performance with other men's.
The other thing is that your partner, if he has any idea of the number of people you've slept with, may find it uncomfortable being with your male friends, constantly wondering if you've been to bed with that man or this man.
One woman I know had four couples to supper and realised that before her marriage, she'd slept with every bloke at the dinner table, including her husband's brother.
They were polite enough not to mention it, of course, but it put her in a very difficult predicament.
'Did my husband know? Did their wives know? If their wives had known, would they have been angry and jealous? Nothing was said, but the uneasy feeling was definitely there in the background. I wished I could put the clock back,' she told me.
Carla Bruni isn't a spring chicken. By 40, you should know what's what. Fifteen lovers seems to me reasonable without being shameful.
When it comes to sex in this day and age, we should all be like Goldilocks, with a chance to taste a few bears' horrible breakfasts before deciding on one that's 'just right'.
dailymail
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