Shocking.

How many people have you had sex with? Don't answer because it doesn't really matter does it? No one cares and they're just going to judge you no matter what you say so whatever, it's grand. And yet, the question of sexual partners always comes up in relationships of all kinds - whether they're friendships or romantic relationships. Because as a nation we are nosy. And we just want to know. Apparently though, if a lad (a straight lad) tells you how many people he's slept with, chances are he might be exaggerating. That's according to new study anyway, that revealed that straight men are far more likely than straight women to exaggerate the number of people they've slept with. Shocking, we know. The study was published in The Journal of Sex Research and showed that there was a clear disparity between the number of people both men and women have claimed to have had sex with. There are a few reasons why this might be the case. The first is that men have a tendency to use “extreme values”, meaning that they'll exaggerate numbers rather than giving actual details, ie: a lot of the men surveyed gave round numbers instead of exact figures when asked. Sounds about right yeah. The second is that women were more likely to count the exact number of people they've slept with instead of just rounding up. And the third is because men and women were shown to have differing opinions on casual sex and one night stands. When asked whether they thought one night stands were "wrong" or not, women were less likely to say that they weren't, meaning that they might also be omitting casual sex encounters from their final counts. Either way, lads be exaggerating and they've been caught rapid.