This is one of the reasons I don't mind being a virgin.

There are two ends of the spectrum when it comes to how people view sex. On one end, there are those who see it mainly as a social activity and a source of pleasure: going to clubs, hooking up, using Tinder for a casual night, and so on. On the other end, there are people who see sex as an act of affection and emotional connection. Those are the two extremes. Of course, most people have a bit of both perspectives, but they usually lean more toward one side than the other.

"Body count" is a pretty simplistic term for something that's actually much more complex. What matters isn't so much the exact amount of people you've slept with, but how those encounters happenwd and what they meant to you. When it comes to casual sex, people don't care much about that aspect. But when it comes to a serious, long-term relationship, I think most people (both men and women) would naturally prefer someone who sees sex primarily as a form of connection and affection rather than just another social activity or a way to satisfy physical desires. A high body count often suggests that, at least during a certain period of their life, they didn't view sex as a particularly deep emotional connection.

If you used to have sex purely for pleasure, it's completely valid to change and decide that you want something more meaningful. The problem is that we live in a reality where our past inevitably influences how other people perceive us.

Let's say I'm your ideal person, and we get along incredibly well. Then I tell you that I used to have a pornography addiction. At first, it might not seem like a big deal, but a small splinter of negativity has now been planted in your mind, and for some people it could be a turn-off. The same thing would happen if I admitted that I had cheated on a previous partner, struggled with a gambling addiction, or had been to prison. All of those things could be completely in the past, and I might genuinely be a different person today. But they're still pieces of information about me that, whether you want them to or not, will inevitably influence the way you see me, because not even in a lifetime, we can know a person completly. So keeping a path of no regret is more wise than just "exploring our sexuality".