I've seen this floating around more than once:
Last Modern Man @LastModern: "Jay Teachman Study
80% Chance she stays married if she's a virgin
39% Chance she stays married if she's had 3 partners
29% Chance she stays married with 6-10 partners
18% Chance she stays married with 16-20 partners
96% of Women who have had 20 or more lovers never get married (Dr. Helen Fig Harvard University)
Her notch count matters"
Given the implausibly large effect sizes, and the fact that the other study on the subject that comes to mind reports very different results (5-33% 5-year divorce risk for women who got married in the 2000s), I finally got annoyed enough to fully debunk it.
The Jay Teachman study does not say what this tweet claims
Teachman seems to have done only one paper on premarital sex and divorce:
This study doesn't even measure the number of premarital sex partners, rather classifying women into 3 buckets: "women who did not have sex before first marriage, women who had premarital sex but only with their husbands, and women who had premarital sex with their husbands and at least one other man."
Also, while some of the model specifications find premarital sex with people other than the husband increases divorce risk, they don't correct for other factors (like religion) which would affect how much the number of pre-marital sexual partners affects divorce risk.
Also the Helen Fig "study" does not exist - it comes from a movie, What’s Your Number?. There is no such person (I can't figure out what the joke here about Helen Fig [one article said it was a joke name] is though. Presumably the name)
