Lays - you can't have just one... Oops, did I miss the apostrophe?

This week I was preparing a questionnaire for a study on polyamorous relationships when I proposed to use the following item: "I have had less than 5 sex partners in the last..." - and here is where it got interesting... My research partner said "two years?" and I said "what? I was going to say 2 months!"

That's when I had a slight epiphany on two things: one, I spend all my time with gay men and thus have lost the grip on the idea that there are other kinds of lifestyles; two, straight people don't have nearly as much sex as we do... 

This might sound silly to some people, but then I wondered how many of my friends can still count the people they have had sex with? I mean, this girl knew the exact number (I'm sure she knows names and all). Personally, I can still remember (almost) all of them since I wasn't that active until a short time ago... But I can sense that soon it'll be impossible (and pointless) for me to try to list them.

Now, although I agree that women in general (at least in the straight world) tend to be more... reserved... about who they sleep with, I think it's way more than that. We were discussing this and we agreed that with men it's really just sex and nothing more... It's like "hey, you're hot, wanna do something?" "ok" and that's that.

I haven't had the chance to ask my friends directly how many people they think they have slept with but a couple of them gave me enough information by answering: "like, in the last week? or month?"

I'm not really interested in getting all philosophical here about the topic but it does get one to think... How does this change the way men interact? Does this mean it's harder for us to connect on that level or do we do other things that require that intimacy?

So, perhaps you won't feel like exposing yourself but... How many have you jumped in the sack with?