Evaluating partners: a gender difference?

An anonymous post in another forum was as follows:

I thought this is more likely to have been written by a woman than by a man.

It occurred to me that heterosexual women are much more likely to evaluate and rank the quality of their sexual partners. I think women tend to summarize and remember each past partner in terms of how good they were. Women who have experience with multiple partners can immediately identify which were the best or the worst.

Men don't think this way.

Maybe I'm generalizing from the single example of myself. I think back of all the women I've been intimate with, and I have no concept of any of them being "better in bed" than the others. There are memorable moments, but I wasn't handing out grades. The most memorable differences among these women are non-sexual.

Thinking about it, I guess I thought the overall quality of a sexual encounter was primarily my responsibility. The male role in sexual intercourse is routinely described as performance (e.g., "he was drunk and just couldn't perform").

By contrast, my wife has a concise evaluation for each of the partners she has had, and she thinks most other women do the same.

What do you think?

 

I don't know who you've been talking to, but you must think differently than a lot of people.

I've had an ex who, during pillow talk, ranked me on several sexual facets in comparison to previous partners.

That's great that you don't do the ranking, but I think that most people subconsciously do it, only the jerks bring it up as a "ranking".

 

I remember some random highlights and lowlights from my sexual experiences.
If you asked me to rank my partners I would need to think about it because it's not something I have really thought through before.
I'm a guy, so there's one data point.

 

I don't rank the people I've been with or give grades.
Some were certainly more memorable than others and of course the long term relationships leave the deepest marks but for me it tends to be based on emotion and how much it scratched the itch I was feeling at the time.

 

To be honest, there are 2 people that would be hard to beat as physical lovers in my bed. I dont know that Ill run across the likes of them again. So, I guess I have ranked them. But, they were not necessarily my favorite lovers and I have no grading system. Nothing like what films or books might portray as a man's little black book w/defining codes, or notches on the bedpost, or even the colloquial locker room talk.

Its funny, when I read the quote in the OP, I automatically thought it was from a man, given their more competitive nature, I guess. There is a whole industry that is devoted to men ranking women, and men often portray themselves as rankers in real life. I have been ranked over and over to my face, and a couple of times Ive overheard some casual remarks between men, In fact, I can sometimes walk down a street and feel myself being ranked. And this even before bed. And, I think many, many women feel this sort of ranking every day.

 

I don't go over and over the list of people with whom I've had sex and rank them. If asked, however, I could tell you which ones were memorable. I might, if pressed even be able to say which time was best, but I am not sure I would want to rank my partners based around sex. There are so many other factors that need to be considered.

 

I'm not talking about how people view someone's appearance -- obviously there is widespread "looks" competition and a kind of hierarchy, etc. Nor is it about how much you like or love the person.

Rather, this is about the kinds of qualities or skills that you'd only find out by actually having a sexual encounter with them.

I haven't heard many "locker room" type conversations with other men, and most of those were years ago, but I do see things men and women have written about their sex lives in literature, media, online fora, etc.

I have observed that men talk about casual sex as if it were like achieving a goal in soccer. I can't think of a time when a guy spoke or wrote at all about the experience of having sex with someone, compared to others, except to critique/defend/brag about HIS OWN performance.

I get the sense that when women talk about men they have been with, they often append a quick evaluation, like "I slept with him. Not bad."

Remember the scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral where Andie MacDowell['s character] lays out her whole sexual history for Hugh Grant? She lists fifty-some partners by number, and tags each one with something about the quality of the experience she had.

Like I said above, my wife did exactly the same thing, when discussing her past beaux.

A man who did a comparable exposition might mention the emotional connection, her personality, her appearance or her physical attributes. He would be much less likely to say anything about what the experience itself was like.

I think Woody Allen spoke for a lot of men when he said: “Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good.” Or the old saying: "Sex is like pizza, even when it's bad it's still pretty good." I can't imagine a woman saying that. Unless something goes wildly wrong, I don't think men are inclined to be critical.

Likewise for me, except that it's been 28 years.

 

I do not have any ranking or something like that.
However I can say to which of my sexual partners I would give another go. I also remember which was open for kinky stuff.

I also think that ranking I this case would be a bad idea cause some excel I something and the other in something else. But still the other one can learn the first thing and basically be better the the first person... But still the perfect lover does not exist.

 

While I don't think about it in terms of ranking, I could easily rank the best/worst at BJ's and best sex over all.

I think because I am happier being the doer then the doie, their skills don't matter a huge deal to me. There was only one particular time which included the worst BJ of my life (painful) and the best sex of my life in terms of what she did. Same woman. I'm not sure how that works but my guess is her over enthusiasm with the BJ is what made it painful but likewise made the sex itself much better than average.

 

Sounds like a pretty generic comment.

Yet, I see the point. Many women will have the desire to come to conclusions about their sexual partner's aptitude, but so will many men. The emotions can get in the way of how well they actually are able to categorize, though. Normal.

 

Not a problem for me; I wish that my list of former lovers was long enough to bother ranking them.
Hopefully (for me ) it's pretty much the same for my wife.

In very general terms, I think that men tend to focus on the conquest more than the result (don't really rank former lovers), while women tend to focus on the result rather than the conquest (they do rank former lovers). Of course there are exceptions to this general observation, and how many details that are recalled will vary from person to person.

 

I made a graph.



I don't naturally rank my partners in respect to one another. They just fall on a bell curve, like anything else. Adding a person's data point does not impact the placement of others, in my overall view.