Almost everyone I know who would be interested in that, while not dating or otherwise committed to someone else, without some kind of religious baggage or ethical qualms that prevents them from wanting to have a one-night stand, has been successful at least once or twice. But those caveats really do carve people out: the guy who was in a committed relationship from 20-22 while attending that party school, the guy who has religious reasons not to have low commitment sex, etc.

And that window doesn't last forever. Men who tend to be charismatic enough to find a quick partner also tend to be charismatic enough to find a stable partner. So a hookup phase tends to give way to a serious relationship, especially when hooking up with a woman who otherwise stands out from the others in terms of some kind of specific compatibility.

So stringing that together multiple times in the phase of your life where you might want to do that instead of a committed relationship, enough to move past the 5-9 number, seems much more unusual to me.

For me, I think I basically only had a 1 year window where I lived in a city where hookups with strangers was feasible and where I wasn't already committed to a monogamous relationship. And I had some hookups that year, but ended up in a serious relationship by the end of that 12-month period. And when I got out of that relationship I had basically a few dates before meeting my wife and falling in love with her.

In other words, even among the men I know who had lots of hookups in their 20's tended to be married by 30 anyway, so it's a limited window of time.

Yeah, plenty of guys like that exist, but I'm giving reasons why the average (or maybe median) might be much lower. The guys I know who have hooked up with at least 20 women in a year (once every 2 weeks) were specifically working and living in a place where that happens with enough frequency (surf instructor in Hawaii who would hook up with women on vacation, bouncer at a popular bar in a party college town). And obviously celebrities are in a different category as well. But are there enough of them to move the numbers for the median?

I went to a law school where plenty of hookups happened, but the pool of potential partners tended to flame out by 5 before they either settled into a single monogamous relationship or exhausted the entire pool of potentially interested short term partners.

I also went to a party school for undergrad, but young people are just so much more awkward about sex and relationships that it seemed like way fewer men had repeated success at any kind of sustainable rate. Some men did, but for the the overall average, even among physically attractive men, was low enough that a big chunk would prefer at least medium term commitments rather than try for hookups every weekend.