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They buried the lede here. > Sexual activity was largely unchanged among unmarried women, along with no notable decline among gay men, researchers reported. B
by tharne 6y ago
They buried the lede here.
> Sexual activity was largely unchanged among unmarried women, along with no notable decline among gay men, researchers reported.
Basically sex is following the pattern of wealth. Men as a group aren't having less sex, instead there's a winner take all effect where a small number of men are having a lot of sex with a lot of women while a large number of men are having little to no sex.
It'll be interesting to see what happens in 5-10 years as the individuals in this cohort begin to settle down and marry and have children. Given the push to eliminate virtually all traditional norms associated with sexual activity, I wouldn't be surprised to see a serious push for legalized polygamy in a few years.
- buboard 6y agohttps://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/sexual-partners-and-marital-happiness/573493/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/sexual-pa...
- vzidex 6y ago> instead there's a winner take all effect where a small number of men are having a lot of sex with a lot of women If true, I wonder how much of that is due to self-selection by men who aren't having sex. Having once upon a time been lonely and bitter, I know that men often end up in positive feedback loops that strengthen their not having sexual partners - due to the attitudes they develop towards women.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ghostbrainalpha 6y agoThat's the thing about positive feedback loops. Sometimes they can be extremely negative.
- deathgrips 6y agoRegardless of the real quantity, society will blame all sexless men for their lack of sex because to acknowledge any other reality would mean that something is wrong with how we are dating.
- wayoutthere 6y agoApp dating doesn’t work well for a whole lot of people — it‘s really bad if you’re fat, trans, disabled, or even just socially awkward. App culture is about looking for a reason to swipe left rather than finding someone you like and accepting their flaws. It sucks for everyone, it’s just easier for straight cis women under 35 who are able-bodied and of a certain size to get laid.
- aianus 6y ago> it's really bad if you’re fat, disabled, or even just socially awkward Isn't it easier to hide these things on a Tinder profile than in a nightclub?
- nicoburns 6y agoNot without outright lying about your appearance. People on Tinder are appearance focussed. People in real life are much more likely to look past those things. It also depends a lot of the kind of nightclub you go to.
- wayoutthere 6y agoNightclubs also suck; they’re the meatspace version of Tinder. Go out and do things during the day, be an interesting person and you will meet interesting people. Even if you don’t, you’ll at least have a good time.
- foepys 6y agoI don't have data for this but I believe that legal polygamy is a big contributor to political extremism. Sexual frustration leads to inferiority complexes that result in aggression against the norm. As an example I see the Middle East where polygamy is not unheard of and the rise of the Islamic State or the Taliban. Would be interesting if anybody has data on this.
- vowelless 6y agoNo. That extremism can be explained by oppressive sexual culture in general, not only polygamy (which is not as widespread as people think). You can’t even date. Many marry young for that reason.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoYou can't separate the factors like you're trying to do.
- redisman 6y agoAnd more powerful nations slicing up and occupying your country willy-nilly for centuries?
- vowelless 6y agoNot centuries; since Sykes Picot. The sexually repressive culture and extremism predates SP by centuries in fact.
- jchallis 6y agoEconomist had an interesting article on violence related to polygamy. I'd be interested if political extremism is a subcase of a violence or something orthogonal. https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2017/12/19/the-link-between-polygamy-and-war https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2017/12/19/the-...
- selimthegrim 6y ago
- lilSebastian 6y agohttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dj1iKZrUcAADnHR?format=jpg&name=medium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dj1iKZrUcAADnHR?format=jpg&name=...
- dundarious 6y agoIt’s a joke. I followed that account and follow her new one now.
- codezero 6y agoI can't tell from the article, but it sounds like they did not take into account wealth in their study, but are inferring a pattern based on other studies on wealth/sexuality, or am I missing something here? One can't simply say "women prefer men with higher socioeconomic status" because it sounds right, and I'm not saying that this isn't studied somewhere, just that when making conclusions about a study, if that factor wasn't included in the study, we shouldn't assume it then is one of the conclusions of the study and start connecting dots with other studies just because it feels right.
- smichel17 6y agoI don't think the patent was saying the two are related, just that they follow the same pattern.
- SeanAppleby 6y agoParticularly, most kinds of inequality tend to follow a Pareto distribution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bleachedsleet 6y agoI don't think the commenter you're replying to was correlating to wealth directly. Rather they were drawing a comparison to wealth: Just like a few people control most wealth, a small number of males have the majority of sexual interactions.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hn_check 6y agoWho is going to make that push? The men aren't looking for multiple long-term partners, if they ever go that route at all. Sex without consequence and burden is the goal. Supporting and dealing with multiple families is the goal of few. Even one is pretty tenuous. No one is calling for polygamy. Hit it and forget it.
- eigenvalue 6y agoI think this is exactly right. Apps like Tinder that normalized online "dating" (before the apps it was much less common among younger people) have allowed the "apex predator" men with good jobs/looks/personalities to have sex on demand with virtually unlimited numbers of women. This has also been made possible because a lot more women are now willing to be in non-exclusive sexual relationships at the beginning when they are first getting to know someone. The data from old OK-Cupid studies clearly show that most women are only immediately attracted to a very small subset of men. It is these men who are having all the sex. Seems like a powder keg over time as the excluded men become bitter and forced to postpone getting married and starting a family. I believe many of these men will eventually find someone once enough of the women who are now rejecting them face biological realities and are forced to settle if they want to have children.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoSome citations for your thesis below. To your last point, IMHO, you're going to continue to see a decline in the total fertility rate (US is roughly ~1.77 this year, lowest on record) as women shift from casual seeking in their 20s to relationship/nesting in their 30s and find the market for partners to be much smaller than they would've anticipated, while also nearing the end of natural fertility (fertility rates start to drop ~35 years old) [1]. > As I stated previously the average female “likes” 12% of men on Tinder. This doesn't mean though that most males will get “liked” back by 12% of all the women they “like” on Tinder. This would only be the case if “likes” were equally distributed. In reality, the bottom 80% of men are fighting over the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are fighting over the top 20% of men. We can see this trend in Figure 1. The area in blue represents the situations where women are more likely to “like” the men. The area in pink represents the situations where men are more likely to “like” women. The curve doesn’t go down linearly, but instead drops quickly after the top 20% of men. Comparing the blue area and the pink area we can see that for a random female/male Tinder interaction the male is likely to “like” the female 6.2 times more often than the female “likes” the male. [2] > The researchers determined that while men’s sexual desirability peaks at age 50, women’s starts high at 18 and falls from there. [3] > “The age gradient for women definitely surprised us — both in terms of the fact that it steadily declined from the time women were 18 to the time they were 65, and also how steep it was,” said Elizabeth Bruch, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan and an author of the study. [3] [1] https://www.acog.org/patient-resources/faqs/pregnancy/having-a-baby-after-age-35-how-aging-affects-fertility-and-pregnancy https://www.acog.org/patient-resources/faqs/pregnancy/having... [2] https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/style/dating-apps-online-men-women-age.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/style/dating-apps-online-...
- ikeyany 6y ago> Given the push to eliminate virtually all traditional norms associated with sexual activity I wonder if this is actually true. I also wonder what your idea of being less 'traditional' means. Having multiple partners, but going from it being done in secret (i.e. cheating) to it being consensual (i.e. swinging)? Going from a president getting a blow job in office to a president who is on his third wife, embroiled in stripper lawsuits while in office? Gay relationships being legal?
- tootahe45 6y ago> It'll be interesting to see what happens in 5-10 years What is already happening in rich parts of Asia. Tons of pissed off women with no kids who want to raise your taxes.
- GuiA 6y ago+ a huge rise in fertility tourism, continued rise of single mothers https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/article/3041258/wealthy-single-chinese-women-choosing-white-sperm-donors https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/article/30412...
- kqvamxurcagg 6y agoAlso interested, why do they want to increase taxes? Any sources or articles about this?
- thu2111 6y agoIt's probably just a reference to the well known phenomenon of women being more likely to vote left wing than men. Women with no family look for something to give them meaning and end up with political activism.
- throw51319 6y agoCan you elaborate more on this TLDR?
- pkaye 6y ago> who want to raise your taxes. Why do they want to raise taxes?
- nine_zeros 6y ago> Why do they want to raise taxes? Takes 2 incomes (or a rich income) to buy the luxuries most women demand. Most women are still not as wealthy as men.
- 6y ago
- Mizza 6y agoIncels call this "hypergamy": https://incels.wiki/images/thumb/c/c8/C57f84720fff59cf29561642a222a299939a1bbd_s2_n1.png/720px-C57f84720fff59cf29561642a222a299939a1bbd_s2_n1.png https://incels.wiki/images/thumb/c/c8/C57f84720fff59cf295616... Although misogynistic incels are obviously abhorrent, I believe that they're probably right in their assessment of their own social status. It just seems like rather than trying to better themselves, they turn it into outward hatred. I've also seen calls by right-wing thought leaders for "enforced monogamy," which obviously seems authoritarian, rapey and wrong. However I do think monogamy and commitment a good moral values to cultivate. Even though there's a lot of "slut-positivity" now, the people I know who live that way seem much less happy, fulfilled and stable.
- api 6y agoMaking the world flat and hyper-connected seems as if it leads to a winner-take-all outcome. Example: putting commerce online created the Amazon monopoly. It's easier than ever to buy from any store you want online, but paradoxically everyone goes to Amazon. This is mostly because everyone goes to Amazon, therefore virtually any product is available there. Only niche products require you to shop elsewhere. So we've put sex online too: Tinder, dating sites, etc. It has never been easier to "shop" for potential sex partners. Is this paradoxically resulting in a narrowing of sexual pairings? I wonder if the paradox can be understood if we look at biology. Imagine the Earth were a uniform environment with a uniform climate, no mountain ranges, no rivers, etc. I imagine that a single species would come to dominate each niche. There might be one large predator, one large ruminant, one bird of prey, one burrowing rodent, and so on... or maybe two or three, but not more than that. You'd probably have a biodiversity collapse. No boundaries = no diversity?
- Mizza 6y agoI think your last point is absolutely the central paradox of global society. The goal seems pretty clear: brutual transnational neofeudal capitalism with a happy, politically correct face becomes the default universal position that defines the dynamics which subcommunities allowed within that framework interact - eventually, the whole planet becomes California.
- spurdoman77 6y agoCasual sex is quite different thing to having a relationships. I dont believe the group who has a lot of casual sex with different partners settle for polygamy typically - relationships are about a lot of other things than sex, while hookups are mostly only aboit sex.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zerr 6y agoWhy is it not the other way around? i.e. rich females getting a lot of males.
- wutbrodo 6y agoMen aren't sexually attracted to money at remotely the level women are. Surely you're aware of this? If not, there are plenty of studies pointing in this direction, plus an evolutionary explanation, plus mountains of anecdotal data that anyone with exposure to other people has.
- changoplatanero 6y agomen don't care how wealthy their sex partners are
- bronco21016 6y agoI’d even argue it goes in the other direction to a degree. I’ve witnessed many relationships where the woman makes more money and it creates tension. Obviously, not in all cases but It does happen.
- selimthegrim 6y agoPalimony is a thing, but what makes these males stick around?
- dx87 6y agoStudies have shown that rich females are less willing to "date down" than males are.
- klmadfejno 6y agoThere's a large amount of debate over this issue. Whatever your opinion may be, the study doesn't seem to agree with it: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2767066 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... Look at the chart for number of sexual partners reported by men and women by year. Honestly just read the study. It has data on many of the issues people are speculating about, including porn and what not. If you were to believe that a small number of men are getting all of the sex at the expense of women, you would expect it to take a more bimodal shape with much fewer men getting 1 partner, some more getting 3+ and more getting 0. Instead we see the number of men getting 3+ declining over time and a big shift from 1 to 0. Another important insight is that the rates of getting no sex drop significantly once you're a little older. Compare the 18-24 year olds to the 25-34 year olds to older. Looks like 25% drops down to 15% drops down to 5% in the most recent year. Thinking of the male people I know who didn't get sex during college, it was mostly because they were busy doing other things or insecure. It's entirely possible for women to favor only the top few men on dating sites but for this not to control the narrative of who gets sex and who doesn't. I'd go as far as to say it's likely it does not.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoThis is exactly what you would expect if the OP's hypothesis is correct. 3 partners really isn't that many. The study should have looked at something like 0, 1-5, 5-19, 20-99, 100+ or something like that. It is not capturing the top end at all.
- klmadfejno 6y agoThis is only true if you believe the people who used to be getting 3+ are now getting 0. This is unlikely to be the case because we don't see the number of people with exactly 2 partners going down.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoIf some of the 3+ people move to 2 and some of the 2s move to 1s or 0s, then you would see the same exact thing. The data in the study you linked to its entirely consistent with what the OP suggested. We need to know what is happening at the tails to determine whether what you're claiming or what the OP is claiming is true. However, OP has a lot of anecdotal evidence in their favor. The study only provides data for the left tail of the distribution, but we need to see the right tail to know the full story. You could be right, but the OP's hypothesis is also supported by the data.
- whytaka 6y agoI wonder if polygamy is more of a loophole escape from sexual prohibitions. That is, people wanted to have sex with more partners but could not outside of marriage. In an age where access to premarital sex is plentiful, I wonder what motivations, if any, there would be for these first-class men to marry more than one. Multiple marriages, it seems to me, would be more of a legal and financial liability.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- michaelmrose 6y agoThe incel theory that 10-20% of the men are having sex with 80% of the females is not supported or even contemplated by this study. I don't come to hacker news to read about hypergammy or Chad even if people use different words. I don't think this entire discussion belongs on this site.
- ttcbj 6y agoI think the first paragraph of the parent may be correct, but I think the second paragraph is inaccurate and unnecessarily discouraging to young men who may be reading this. Here is my experience as a happily married man: 1. Throughout my 20s and early thirties I was very, very unsuccessful with dating. I was shy, and lacked self-confidence. At age 32 I had had one partner, and a period from 27-32 with no relationships of any kind. I did go on a decent number of bad first dates during that period. 2. In my early thirties, I continued to be shy, not conventionally attractive, etc. But I became comfortable enough with myself to keep at dating consistently and to realize that rejections often were not about me (or didn't say anything bad about me). I continued to be well intentioned, sincere, conscientious, and generally decent. I came to understand who I was and what I was looking for better. 3. After many bad first dates, and a few unsuccessful medium term relationships, I met my wife. She is conventionally attractive. It happened that we were perfect for each other in other ways. We had similar financial values, we had compatible senses of humor, we both liked camping and backpacking, and we could just talk and laugh together endlessly (we still can to this day). 4. We dated for a year and half, got married, had kids, and have a spectacularly fortunate alliance 10 years in. So, if my 32 year old self had read this thread, I would have been agreeing about 'apex predators' and legalized polygamy and the general hopelessness of everything. But, I think there are many, many women who would love to meet and marry exactly the kind of decent, sincere, intelligent, thoughtful men who frequent HN. You just have to stick with it. You have to go on a lot of bad first dates. You have to be patient and not overly critical as you get to know people. You have to be looking for someone who is a really good match for you overall, and to whom you provide a lot of value. My sincere advice is this: My 20s and early 30s were pretty awful in terms of dating. But if you meet someone wonderful for you at 33, none of that will matter in the long run. All that frustration will fade away, and you will be happy. So keep at it, even if dating really sucks most of the time.
- purplezooey 6y agoWhat exactly does conventionally attractive mean, would anyone want to be called that, heh
- foogazi 6y ago
- cabite 6y agoThe red pill
- downerending 6y agoI've noticed this among the young men in my extended family and friends. One guy is model cute, and goes out on Tinder "dates" whenever he wants (new girl weekly, at least). He had a live-in girlfriend, but with an open relationship. And if I were one of these women, I'd probably do the same thing. Even if you can't marry a hottie, if you can have sex with one a few times, that still sounds like fun. The other guys, who are "normal", and certainly not homely, just don't go out at all, even at what I would consider to be a fairly advanced age. I suspect some are still virgins. Instead, video games and pot. Since I am homely, this is exactly what I'd be doing if I were young now, given society's recent barrage of disparagement towards men. And especially if I knew someone like adult-me who got absolutely crushed by alimony. I foresee no particular solution. I think we'll just follow Japan and South Korea. Other societies with different norms will simply displace us. Which I think is fine.
- notyourday 6y ago> Instead, video games and pot. If their free time is about video games and pot, I would say they only have themselves to blame.
- vsareto 6y agoThere's women who do that too, it's just the connection is missing
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoThose women are dating, or at least having sex with, different guys.
- notyourday 6y ago> There's women who do that too, it's just the connection is missing Because both video gaming and pot smoking is a solo or a very small group activity where the slots get taken by pot smoker's and video gamer's buddies.
- chrisjarvis 6y ago
- georgeburdell 6y ago>I wouldn't be surprised to see a serious push for legalized polygamy in a few years. I mentioned the same thing to my wife, only half-joking. Many of her friends are single, professional women who don't want to date down. The problem is that all of the men they're interested in (millionaires in their 30s and 40s) get married quickly after they signal they're on the market. It seems to me there's presently an "inefficiency" in the market where they could take on a second (or more), willing wife if only it were legal. It might be dangerous to society to have so many permanently single men, but the status quo appears to negatively impact educated women.
- ponker 6y agoThe status quo doesn’t negatively impact educated women, it impacts educated women who refuse to date men of lower educational attainment.
- eigenvalue 6y agoI don't think it's just about education. It's multi-dimensional and more about overall status, which is a combination of innate factors like looks/intelligence/humor and things like education and job prestige/salary.
- hhjinks 6y agoEither way, women deciding to sleep around for a decade and then complaining that there are "no" men left is a problem of their own design.
- wutbrodo 6y agoAs I enter my thirties, this dynamic has started to shift dramatically. All the women I know who haven't settled down by their early 30s are having crises about their inability to find a compatible mate, just as their physical attractiveness is declining precipitously[1]. As the priority shifts from sex/light companionship to deeper relationships, women's position in the modern dating market goes from very good to very bad: most of the age-30ish men I know who aren't in longterm relationships are dating attractive 25 year olds, while knowing that there's a deep bench of women their age that they can get dates (and sex) with relatively easily. This sudden fall of a cliff, which only takes a few years, has to be extremely disorienting for those women that don't enter committed relationships by that point in their life (or those who exit them). It's also very predictable, but it's hard to blame twenty-somethings for living in the moment and frittering away their most attractive years having lots of sex. Assuming that marrying down is a better fate than remaining a spinster, it's not clear to me how these dynamics balance out. I know this all sounds rather harsh, but it's an inevitability of looking at the "market dynamics" of a matching problem. [1] I don't say this to be insulting, it's just a fact of male attraction in the same way that the massive skew towards the tiny top decile is for female attraction.
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago> I wouldn't be surprised to see a serious push for legalized polygamy in a few years. If history is any guide this will likely lead to widespread social problems if it takes off.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ashtonkem 6y agoMarriage is also becoming stratified by economic class. Poorer Americans used to marry at the same rate as wealthy Americans, but that changed in 2008. Since then poorer Americans are significantly less likely to get married than their richer peers.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoIt's also interesting to see the fertility rate by income. Basically only bottom 20% and top 1% of US are above replacement rate. I can't find the graph I wanted to show this, but this one is pretty close: https://twitter.com/cschmert/status/993934031174725632 https://twitter.com/cschmert/status/993934031174725632
- woah 6y agoLots of people who are not in the top 1% and bottom 20% are in cities with severely constrained housing supply
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoYeah, that's probably a big part of it.
- Grimm1 6y agoI'm a high earner in tech like I imagine many people on the forum, and also like many people on the forum my life is super busy. My last relationship ended really badly took like two years to get over it and then I was suddenly really busy and I've kept being really busy as my titles have changed and my personal interest in starting my own business has increased etc etc and now we're in a pandemic. I'd argue that there's a whole group of young guys who are just so freaking busy and not really in a place where they can meet a bunch of single women, like I don't even know where I'd put a significant other in my life at the moment. I guess that compounds because I don't drink really so I'm not going to bars and my personal hobbies are reading, hiking and coding and trying to get a company off the ground so It doesn't really lend itself to meeting people either. At this rate I've been single for 4-5ish years and if if my life and the world keeps up I can see another 5 years ahead but hey I make more than most people I know, got a senior title pretty young and if I can make it work I'll be running my own business before 30. Edit: And I'll add I've been told I look like Ethan Hawke and can be pretty funny in the right mood so I'd say I'm doing alright in looks and personality.
- jwilber 6y agoI think these things are fair points for relationships, but the post is about sex in general, and busy schedules don’t tend to affect hook ups much.
- crescentfresh 6y ago> I don't even know where I'd put a significant other in my life I think we're talking about non-commital encounters, not "relationships" like you're referring to. (Not that there's not a time element involved to nurture that part of one's life!)
- bradlys 6y agoThe amount of men in your position is much lower than you are thinking. You're in a bubble. The US male populace has maybe 10% of people in similar roles such as yourself. Not many men earn $100k+/yr - period. Most who do are well past 30. If you're in FAANG making $300k+, then you're part of the 1% of /all/ men (not just men at your age). Are you going to say that the top 10% of earners overrepresent the amount of people who aren't having sex? Seems far fetched to me. Having a high income is a marker that many people look for and prioritize. Being a high income earner doesn't mean you're busier than other people either. I see many people making $250k+/yr and have regular 40 hour work weeks where I see people below $100k/yr pushing 60+ hours frequently.
- starpilot 6y agoA lot of those top 10% men are going polyamorous, and so you have an uptick in complaints from women about finding a monogamous guy. I've seen it on Tinder and Reddit. The thing is, the vast majority of men are still monogamous. They're just ignored and unacknowledged by most women.
- wutbrodo 6y ago> complaints from women about finding a monogamous guy Yea, it's a bizarre dynamic: women who are looking for lots of casual sex are fine, but the women I know who are looking for deeper relationships are continually frustrated. It seems pretty stupid on its face, but female attraction is really complicated, and if the women in my friend group are any indication, they don't quite understand how it works either[1]. Especially once they reach their thirties and get hit with the double whammy of declining attractiveness and a higher desire for deeper relationships. That is to say, I think the "unmarried" qualifier in the headline is hiding the fact that the status quo is pretty dysfunctional for both sexes, and this seems to be driven primarily by the environment's incompatibility with female mate choice (combination of frictionless matching and monogamy norms). [1] It's not quite an insult to say that female attraction is more well-rounded in many ways than male attraction is)
- koonsolo 6y ago> Especially once they reach their thirties and get hit with the double whammy of declining attractiveness and a higher desire for deeper relationships. You mean their biological clock is ticking to get kids? > female attraction is really complicated They indeed look for more aspects than men. But I think it can best be summed up as: 1. successful man 2. man sweet enough to take care of the family 3. man hard enough to protect the family from the outside world I think there is still confusion about these points: successful does not equal rich. A born-rich loser will have a harder time than a hard working entrepreneur that might hit jackpot some day. And they are not looking for jerks. They are looking for jerks to the outside world, and sweet to them. Basically a man who can and will protect them and their family. But of course, I think we can all agree that women are more complex than this ;).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mettamage 6y agoI'm seeing a trend in the replies here of the parent that might show an implicit bias towards a particular feeling of powerlessness in getting sex + companionship. If this is you, then know the following: in most cases, one is able to get an abundance of intimacy [1]. I know this because this was one of my life goals in my mid teens to early twenties. It was my first big achievement in life, for me anyway, I worked hard at it. Don't believe me? Checkout Sean Stephenson (RIP). If you think he dated the women of his dreams because he's wealthy, my experience suggests it's his charisma. I've learned that a huge part of it can be trained. The funny thing is, no one would call me charismatic, yet, I found my voice and a way to expose my personality in an attractive enough way to the women I want. I simply know the pain and if I can help other people not experience it, yea that would be an amazing use of my time. The average woman judges me to be a 6 by looks at best. My target group of women almost never praise me for my physical features but my personality instead. Judge for youerself: I'm tall, super skinny (most often the skinniest), have a very atypical face, so yea not in the top 1%. It took me 5 years to learn what I wanted to learn. And now I'm now I'm happy in that area of my life. For the past 8 years, I've had no issues related to lack of intimacy. If you need any dating advice, I'm by far not the best dating coach, and I am by far not the best seducer. But I'm a HN'er so, and I struggled a shit ton with this and learned a lot of it consciously. Also, my peak moments have been borderline insanely awesome. So there's that. Shoot me an email (see my profile) and I hope I can help a bit, any gender is welcome to email (I've seen some overlap in issues and approaches). In most cases, I've noticed, I can't help [2]. I wish I could share online resources, but it's a bit of a mine field since it really depends on how you learn and how you perceive the world. Or just do what I did and simply Google "how to get a girlfriend/<word_for_intimate_partner>" and go on a wild adventure that will lead to your future love life. When learning this on your own, remember to be: respectful, full of empathy (both cognitive and affective empathy [3]), playful, confident and kind (preferably, in that order). I know, it's a lot, I never said this would be easy ;-) [1] Intimacy being defined here as a mix of sex and companionship. Also, I say "most cases", since I know how terrible I was, but I also know that there are people even worse than me. In most cases, these people wouldn't be capable of applying any sort of logical thinking, so I suspect this isn't you. Also abundance: the feeling of "yep, I'm good :)" [2] I'm not a coach, just someone who wants to help. What I am struggling with when helping my friends is that: in general my friends didn't dare to experiment enough on their own. In some cases, this was even the case when I was able to give them exact counter evidence, tailored to every whim. So yea, if you at least aspire to want to be able to self-experiment, I might be able to help somewhat. I've done it :D [3] Cognitive empathy: you're able to understand why someone goes through a certain situation by understanding it logically. Example: someone falls, therefore they must be hurt, therefore they will appreciate help. Affective empathy: you're able to understand why someone goes through a certain situation by understanding it by feeling their pain. Example: someone falls (you feel it as well), by feeling their pain, you can feel that the person landed hard on his knee and by looking at their face and "feeling" their facial expressions, you feel their are in a huge distress. You now know that you need to calm them down and make sure their knee is cared for. ^ These two examples are quite simplictic.
- onetimemanytime 6y ago>>Men as a group aren't having less sex, instead there's a winner take all effect where a small number of men are having a lot of sex with a lot of women while a large number of men are having little to no sex. Isn't this normal? Males in the animal world fight to death for the right to pass down their genes. Women don't care about all men getting sex...everyone wants the "best" possible mate for themselves to have sex and/or kids.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoIt is normal, but the only successful societies have been the ones that resolve this issue in such a way that most men can find a sexual partner.
- watwut 6y ago> Males in the animal world fight to death for the right to pass down their genes. They actually don't. Such a thing would be on the rare side in animal world. The only exception would be spiders where he risks being eaten. Other then that, they either have basically hookups or woo lady while ignoring other guys.
- onetimemanytime 6y ago>>Other then that, they either have basically hookups or woo lady while ignoring other guys. Only if "other guys" didn't have their own plans. A quick search: Bees fight to death over females http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8354000/8354788.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8354000/835... Male Bison Fight for Harem Rights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4eOhuLDfeU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4eOhuLDfeU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem_(zoology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem_(zoology)
- watwut 6y agoI said rare, did not said never. And typical animal sex does not involve fight for death among males. I don't mean typical as in slightly over 50%, but as in overwhelming majority. Animals are way more likely to fight over food and such. Sex, not all that much and they have not that much reason to fight over that.
- throwaway_USD 6y ago>It'll be interesting to see what happens in 5-10 years as the individuals in this cohort begin to settle down and marry and have children. Hint: they continue having a lot of sex with a lot of different partners outside the marriage. As you said its winner takes all.
- codezero 6y agoI just want to point out how so many of the responses to this thread (and the thread itself) are much more a lament of "others are doing X and I am not" - and jumping to conclusions as to why that might be. I also want to add that so much going on here is based on really thin anecdata about how other people are fucking on tinder and you aren't. I don't see many people here talking about how they engaged in intentional self improvement. You aren't owed a significant other, or sex. Nobody is. If you're not getting it, it's not because someone else was born hotter than you. Stupid, ugly people fuck all the time.
- deathgrips 6y ago>You aren't owed a significant other, or sex. Nobody is. It's so interesting how whenever any man talks about romantic problems he is met with this feminist mantra "you aren't owed sex". Do you honestly think that's what we're talking about? If someone talked about how much it sucks that they don't have car and need to walk to work would you tell them "you aren't owed a car"? I think people regurgitate this phrase because we can't ever acknowledge that sexual empowerment results in peoples needs not being met. It must be their fault, they must be sabotaging somehow. They must be sexists.
- codezero 6y agoI think your comment is fair - and if I thought there was a dialog happening on this thread, I'd be happy to engage in one, but I've read through a lot of the threads, and I'm not hearing much about why people think a scientific study validates their personal feelings of loneliness, or what conditions are meaningfully impacting that loneliness. I'm hearing mostly outward complaints about what other people are doing to them, and that's mostly why I left my comment - a counter point. I do get that it's not so simple as "it's their fault" and I do appreciate you making that comment, it's worth thinking about this next time, but it's hard to always do when you don't feel like everyone is coming to the table with open minds and good intentions.
- swat535 6y agoSo you're basically ignoring all the data and studies regarding this issue and still decide to handwave the whole thread. We're talking about the impact of large percent of men not having sex on society and you're response to this is: "Stupid, ugly people fuck al the time" and imply this is a non issue
- thrwaway69 6y agoThe reality is most men are unfit to reproduce. Accepting that takes a bit of a time but eventually you will learn that coming to terms with your value on biological level helps. I don't think the current trends are problematic. The previous trends of overpopulation and women having excessive kids were. The depleting rights of them. Those trends were the problem.
- rowawey 6y agoYes, power law distribution. And from an evolutionary psych perspective, potentially there are greater forces at work: subconscious selection/self-selection and reduction of coupling/breeding/heterosexual* identity to limit famine/excess infant mortality. * LGBT couples still form families through biological and adopted children. Also, as in China and the US, millions of idle, unsexed men foment revolution/change/mass casualty incidents to a more socioeconomically-stable society. If you want more sex in anarcho-capitalist society, make more money ( No Money, No Honey ).. or be a part of a socialist/communist state, i.e., East Germans had more sex and GDR women had better sex. PS: Since this anonymous, I haven't been laid in 13 years... and I'm getting older. There are more barriers to get laid these days: - people are more distracted by their smartphones, pointless/unfulfilling diversions from their miserableness, and overworking - small-talk, interacting with people non-superficially, boundaries, and the Golden Rule are dead - bars, clubbing and Burning Man/Coachella/etc. are all-but-dead - apps like Tinder cater primarily to excessively young and beautiful people If you want to meet quality people who care about more than themselves, I say go where there are volunteers: - protests/marches - volunteer opportunities - far left bookstores - medicine And for yours truly, community poly/swap/open mutual MfFf works best for me. I need to get my superior out of my anterior, and pave-the-way to make that happen. Right now, I'm taking care of my elderly mom who had a stroke and stepfather divorced her without warning.
- foogazi 6y ago> I wouldn't be surprised to see a serious push for legalized polygamy in a few years Why? Who do you think would benefit from this?
- poulsbohemian 6y ago>Basically sex is following the pattern of wealth. Men as a group aren't having less sex, instead there's a winner take all effect where a small number of men are having a lot of sex with a lot of women while a large number of men are having little to no sex. Might I offer an observation? As women have become the greater number of degree achievers and have entered the work force in greater numbers, combined with the availability of birth control, they simply have greater agency than in the past and thus can be ever more selective. So this statement on wealth cuts both ways for men and women. Secondly, ask any single female friend about their dating experiences. It's very clear there are many men who really have no idea how to interact with women in the context of a health, adult relationship.