One of the more common sex questions I’m asked – aside from the usual questions about orgasm, desire and erections – is one that seeks my personal opinion, rather than scientific information. Many women and men want to know if they should tell their number – you know, the number of people they’ve had sex with – to a new partner.

People have to do what they feel comfortable with so I tend to shy away from offering a direct “yes” or “no” to this question. However, I’m personally not a fan of the practice. Why?

When you ask someone a question, you better be prepared for the answer. And in American culture, few people seem to be prepared to process the number of people their partner has had sex with. If their partner hasn’t ever been with anybody else (number = 0), then some people feel overly eager to de-flower the person while others may feel intimidated by the possibility of being The One Who Takes Their Virginity. If their number is low, some people then lie about their own number in response, so as to be on par. If the number seems high, all too often people get judgmental or they wonder about the risk of infection or cheating or “what kind of person” the person they are dating is.

As if a single number could ever tell someone “what kind of person” you are dating.

If you want to know if your partner has a sexually transmissible infection, or STI, you two should go get tested together. Knowing their number will not tell you whether or not they have an infection.

If you want to know whether you’re compatible, knowing their number will not necessarily give you a good sense of their present-day values or what they want in life. Spending time together, getting to know one another, going through your own ups and downs together, is a more likely path.

Plus, there’s the whole issue of what “sex” is. We know from research that people have all sorts of definitions for what they consider having “had sex.” As such, people often give numbers that are meaningless. One person may count every single person they ever had intercourse with as their number. Another might only include the number of people they had intercourse with whose names they can remember or who they had sex with more than once. Some people include oral sex partners or anal sex partners in their number. Others don’t. And unless you’re willing to get into the nitty gritty details of who gets counted and why – and you are willing and compassionately able to handle your partner’s answers – I wouldn’t go there. Would you?

Sometimes lines from Kenny Rogers’ famous song, The Gambler, apply eerily well to life, love and even sex. The whole “you gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em” even works with orgasms. After all, with experience, women and men often develop some sense of when to persist in their quest for an orgasm and when to give up. And while some people truly do fold their orgasm cards and let their partner know that an orgasm is unlikely, but the sex is great regardless, others embrace the other four letter F word that’s relevant to sex: they fake it.

Fake anything generally gets a bad rap. I will not, for example, eat fake crab. Nor am I a fan of fake designer handbags and I’m certainly not one to fake an orgasm. But some women and men do fake orgasms. And who’s to say there’s anything wrong with that?

I often tell the story of a woman I know who knows an awful lot about sex. She also knows all sorts of things about her own body, including what types of stimulation and pleasure are likely to lead her to orgasm during sex with a partner. But you know what? She fakes orgasms with new partners. From her perspective, she hopes that faking her orgasm helps to enhance her partners’ self-esteem. As time goes along, she shows them how to please her – teaching them new ways of licking or stroking, while never letting on that the old techniques never worked in the first place. Given how much some people need to feel as though they are pleasing their partner the way they want to, this could be a good idea for some.

I’ve also heard from various men, women and couples who struggle with orgasm. Often, the woman does not orgasm and she chooses not to fake it, but to be honest about her experience and communicate with her partner about (a) how to make it work for her or (b) how she doesn’t need an orgasm in order to feel sexually satisfied. In some cases, a woman’s partner has been unable to comprehend how sex without an orgasm could possibly be satisfying. No amount of convincing on the woman’s part seems to make it better. These different views of sex have caused problems in some relationships and even contributed to the end of a few I know. Would it have been easier in these cases if the woman simply faked it? Or were they cases in which the man not accepting the woman’s experience reflected bigger problems in their ability to communicate with each other or accept one another?

Women and men pretend to have orgasms for any number of reasons: to end sex without making it a big deal, because they’re tired, because they want to make their partner feel special or skilled, or even because they wonder if they can indeed be that convincing. To learn how to explore your body, alone or with a partner, in ways that ease your experience of pleasure and possibly orgasm, check out Because It Feels Good or For Yourself.

There’s so much to love about sex: the romance, the lust, the dirty talk, the ability to take on or cast off identities at your whimsy. But sex can also be a rewarding experience because of what it does to your body – and not just in the goosebump- or orgasm-inducing ways.

Sex can be a terrific workout and it can also inspire people to get or stay in good shape. Sure, sex doesn’t typically burn as many calories as one might burn on the elliptical, but frenzied sex certainly burns more calories than sitting on the sofa watching Glee. And while sex isn’t likely to help you gain a great deal of lean muscle mass, you may find that certain acrobatic positions (the Wheelbarrow, anyone?) helps to pump up your arm muscles in ways you didn’t previously think sex was capable of.

Even slow sex can help people to stretch, to expand their body and their breath and to become an inch or two more flexible in various ways. Plus, sex gives us goals to reach! If you’ve ever sat in yoga class and wondered why anyone would ever care to stretch their legs over their head in an inverted plow position, you have probably never had to ask yourself “why?” if you’ve tried a similar maneuver during sex. All you need to know in sex is that it feels good, it’s fun and it lets you and your partner find out what your bodies are capable of together.

Sex also inspires us to get in touch with our bodies and to keep them healthy. We have the opportunity to learn to appreciate our own body and that of our partner for everything that it can do and be, whatever shape or size it may come in. Having sex in front of a mirror can help us to re-imagine our bodies and to indulge in their beauty. The desire to stay sexually active as we age can also inspire us to stay fit and flexible through exercise and stretching. Sex helps us to live more active, healthy lives – it motivates us, excites us and gives us the chance to experience our bodies in positive, self-affirming, phenomenal kinds of ways.

Being naked together also gives us the chance to know each others' bodies in private ways – to become familiar with, even to memorize, a partner’s freckles, birth marks or dimples. Whether we stay with our partner or eventually go our separate ways, those are the parts that we – and few others, most likely – will know by heart.

When I teach human sexuality classes, I often ask students to list – on an anonymous survey – their favorite things about being close to or sexual with another person. Among the long list of kissing, touching, orgasms and expressing love is sometimes a vague description of getting to feel sensations that they’ve never before experienced.

For some people, sex brings orgasms – and as often as people may describe certain foods as being “orgasmic” or a very good novel as being “almost as good as an orgasm” – there never really is anything else that is exactly like an orgasm. The neurological event that is an orgasm is unique. For most people, orgasm is a pleasurable sensation. For a small proportion of people, orgasms bring on headaches (for a lucky few, orgasms seem to cure headaches!).

Other times – whether or not a person experiences orgasm – they feel something else that they primarily feel during sex. Some people, when they are lying together and kissing or being intimate, have a sensation of melding into two. I’ve heard and read lovely descriptions of this, and been fortunate enough to experience it myself. Some people talk about looking at their bodies and not being able to tell the difference between the two. Others talk in terms of energy fields, as if they can see these auras around their body and their partner’s body connect and melt into each other. And these aren’t even the drug-induced experiences of sex!

Then there are the moments of realization – the moments where you’re having intercourse, let’s say, and you step back in a moment of wonder and realize that your partner’s body is inside your body and how crazy is that!?!? As humans, we go through most of our days and most of our lives completely alone in our bodies. To have the experience of having someone be inside your body, or to be inside someone else’s body, can be rich with feelings of closeness, vulnerability, risk and union – that is, if you are willing to step back and consider, with awe and appreciation, what is really going on there between you two.

Being sexual with another person can also bring about feelings of “wow” – as in, “I can’t believe he loves me like this” or “Did she really just do that incredible thing with her tongue?” or “I never thought people could actually feel this good except in movies.” There are many feelings that people want to be a part of when they have sex – they may want to feel naughty, cherished, loved, wanted, dominated, seductive, powerful, or demure, all feelings and identities I wrote about in Because It Feels Good, as women and men learn to navigate sex in ways that feel right to them, and that evoke something more. And these are all reasons why sex can be a very, very good thing.

Debby Herbenick, PhD, MPH writes Velocity's weekly Loveville column and is author of the book Because It Feels Good: A Woman's Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction.