12 ms·

"How lucky I am to be her 23rd partner?" No offense, but think this honestly says a lot more about your own views and what your project on others than some kin

"How lucky I am to be her 23rd partner?" No offense, but think this honestly says a lot more about your own views and what your project on others than some kind of generalized statement. I personally would view going through the wringer of life relationships as a good thing, and if I was 40+ and met someone who hadn't experienced that in this day and page it's probably more likely they had also had some social hang up that you just haven't learned about. This also isn't to endorse the opposite of dating a person on their 5th divorce who's out hooking up every week or something. Anecdotally among those I know, whether someone had one vs. multiple partners had little bearing on the quality of their relationships. Those that had more, while they had their own issues related to that also had a more "realistic" view of sex and relationships IMO. Some of them felt glad to "get it out of their system" so to speak. If anything, those with just one partner maybe you could argue experienced something different (you don't know what you don't know), but they are still not immune to relationship issues.

pcthrowaway 3y ago
> No offense, but think this honestly says a lot more about your own views and what your project on others than some kind of generalized statement. Yeah, it's a bit of an antiquated attitude at this point. If you're monogamous, you should be over the moon to be her last partner. The one she chose after doing extensive field research.
- anotherhue 3y ago
  'Chose' implies that _she_ chose to end all other relationships. Field research works both ways.
- Gud 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Oh dear...
    - themaninthedark 3y ago
      Is there something wrong with someone decided to marry a person based on their wealth rather than on physical or emotional attraction?
      - hef19898 3y ago
        That is an interesting way to read the, now luckily dead, comment I replied to.
- wruza 3y ago
  The suggested dynamics implies that the other parties selection pool stays constant, which is not true at all ages.
- worthless-trash 3y ago
  Just because its old, doens't mean its wrong.
  - CuriouslyC 3y ago
    Maybe it was right for a different world. That world doesn't exist anymore though, and it's never coming back no matter how much conservatives try to knee jerk us into the 19th century.
    - theandrewbailey 3y ago
      The world might have changed, but human nature and sexuality have not. We're still the same damn species, so the same rules apply.
      - CuriouslyC 3y ago
        Human sexuality is 100% culture dependent though. There are tribes where people are promiscuous, and tribes where men have multiple wives, and both of those traditions definitely predate rigid monogamy. Human nature is people want to have sex, and will form lasting relationships for mutual benefit.
      - pixl97 3y ago
        Ideas of human sexuality are ones shaped and formed by the culture they are within, which can change even in short timelines. Unless you like the idea that the warlord gets all the women and you get nothing?
    - meinmissoula 3y ago
      It seems like several different things are getting intertwined here and people are arguing past each other based on perceived "sides" and largely imagined positions being projected onto one another. You can have gender equality and feminism without casual sex. Many young people today, both male and female, feel like the current system they're embedded in is frustrating and unfulfilling. Everyone's personal preferences are equally valid. We should accept that people who express unease or unhappiness with the current dominant cultural norms pressed upon them have legitimate feelings, rather than attack and insult them by suggesting their desires belong in "the 19th century".
- bt4u 3y ago
  [dead]
- trentearl 3y ago
  Is it antiquated if most humans living today still think that way?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - k__ 3y ago
    Do "most" humans think that way?
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      Yes, unless you're a racist who restricts your definition of humans to white westerners... Most of the global human population still has values which are 'traditional' relative to the average white westerner, but white westerners often have a blind spot for that and reveal this blindspot when they say things like "the whole world" to mean western nations specifically, and "the rest of the world" to mean Europe but not America.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - pixl97 3y ago
    If for some reason most humans thought the Earth was flat, the idea would still be antiquated.
    - trentearl 3y ago
      Yes that is true, but that is a scientific fact and is not an appropriate comparison when talking about human populations and their approach to pair bonding, which is driven mostly by culture. So no, it’s not antiquated and your response requires looking at humanity through a very narrow and biased lens. Westerners can still appreciate our values while being in the minority. I do.
- stuckinhell 3y ago
  In age where an incredible amount of scientific research is fraudulent, even ivy league university presidents are resigning... I think I'll take ideals that have survived for thousands of years over dodgy conclusions from likely fraudulent and unrepeatable data.
  - phailhaus 3y ago
    Appeal to Tradition, classic fallacy. [1] Which ideals? Slavery has survived for thousands of years, does that make it better? Took thousands of years to develop the concept of capitalism, should we have skipped it? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition
    - stuckinhell 3y ago
      The ones about marriage and the relationships between men and women than exist in nearly every civilization in the world for thousands of years. I think the jury is out on the modern world, as many slaves in middle ages lived far better than the capitalist "slave" workers in the America, India, Philippines, today.
      - phailhaus 3y ago
        The reason why they had such similar ideals is because none of them had effective birth control. That was just developed in the 20th century. Pre-marital sex is no longer an issue, you no longer have to marry someone just because of your raging hormones.
        mensetmanusman 3y ago
        However, the jury is still out because many existing cultures are disappearing by choice.
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      Instead simply trust the experts... oh wait. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
- vGPU 3y ago
  Yes, the 10th owner of the Honda civic. You get to take her to her 400,000th mile!
- Dudester230602 3y ago
  N-th partner when she was 19 or last partner when she is 38... Tough choice.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Alternatively, you can simply be the next rock to be turned over and moved away from. Nothing guarantees you are the one, nor the last partner.
wvh 3y ago
A higher number of sexual partners impairs pair bonding. And obviously if that number is around 23 partners, the odds are not great. I'm not a traditionalist myself, I'm merely stating there are real non-political non-moral reasons to view a high partner count as not conducive to long-term relationship satisfaction.
- Nursie 3y ago
  You’ll have some good peer-reviewed study on this bonding I presume? The kind that factors in how much people lie about this stuff?
  - causality0 3y ago
    Wouldn't that just be a statistical law? The Lindy's effect? The more partners you have, the more partners you will have before the end of your life.
  - alfnor 3y ago
    > For women marrying since the start of the new millennium: > Women with 10 or more partners were the most likely to divorce, but this only became true in recent years; > Women with 3-9 partners were less likely to divorce than women with 2 partners; and, > Women with 0-1 partners were the least likely to divorce. https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-link-between-premarital-sex-and-marital-stability https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-li... > In our sample, only 23 percent of the individuals who got married over the course of the study had had sex solely with the person they married. That minority of men and women reported higher marital quality than those who had had sex with other partners prior to marriage. We further found that the more sexual partners a woman had had before marriage, the less happy she reported her marriage to be. This association was not statistically significant for men. https://before-i-do.org/ https://before-i-do.org/ > We investigated sex differences in shoulder to hip ratios (SHR) and waist to hip ratios (WHR), and their relationships to different features of sexual behavior. Males with high SHR and females with low WHR reported sexual intercourse at an earlier age, more sexual partners, more extra-pair copulations (EPC), and having engaged in more instances of intercourse with people who were involved in another relationship (i.e., having themselves been EPC partners). The predictive value of these morphological features was highly sex-specific. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(02)00149-6 https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(02)00149-6 > Past sexual promiscuity and sexual fantasies (Predictions 10 and 11). In both contexts, a partner’s concealed past sexual promiscuity (promiscuity) was rated as one of the more upsetting forms of deception (about 1 SD above the overall mean). Ratings did not differ by sex (ps > .05), failing to support Prediction 10. Prediction 11 was supported in the long term, with men’s ratings of a partner’s concealed sexual fantasies about others (sexual fantasy) relatively higher than women’s. There was no significant sex difference in the short term (p > .05). These results mirror those observed for sexual infidelity and flirtation and further suggest that the risk of cuckoldry constitutes a potent form of strategic interference for men in the long-term mating context. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167204271303 https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167204271303
rainworld 3y ago
Modern (wo)man encounters human nature, finds it lacking, attempts to bend it to his or her will, fails miserably, makes everyone miserable in the process, and learns nothing from the experience.
- wccrawford 3y ago
  I think you can leave out "modern" because I'm pretty sure that's a tale as old as time.
saiya-jin 3y ago
Well, yes and no. Nobody wants to be that guy marrying a girl who slept around when younger to compensate some issues, 'discover herself' or whatever was the justification, if there even was one. I can imagine it should be the same from the other side, but for some reason that's not always the case. Also from health perspective you play statistics game with plethora of bacteria, amoebes and viruses that can easily make you infertile or get a cancer few decades down the road. The thing is, people don't change. They evolve, slowly, over long time as life brings whatever it brings. But bad people don't become good. A guy fucking everything that moves ain't gonna become that dream father of your kids that you can rely on anytime, especially through tough times (and they always come, one of few sure things in life). There can be multiple good reasons why anybody in their late 30s had only 1 or two partners before and they would be a great partner for rest of life. I am struggling to find a single reason how opposite would be considered a good scenario and any kind of advantage, rather just massive warning signs. Personally, I'd say 5-10 and not more. Whatever lesson you need to get from relationships, it will be covered. After that, unless people are not already emotionally dead inside, its just heading in that direction step by step. Everytime you fall in love and breakup, a bit of your heart is not coming back (which is not bad per se, scars tell our stories and should give us some valuable lessons, but those lessons should be learned from). And fucking around for fucking around sake or chasing some numbers nobody cares about is plain immature and stupid. Identify what you are compensating for, fix the underlying problem, there is always one and its usually some unresolved crap from childhood, missing good father figure or similar. Its not great and glorified like some teen movies may make you believe, but pretty consistently a sad picture with all corresponding consequences. You don't have to trust a random internet stranger, over time you will see plenty of this around you in some form as you grow older, just look for it.
- ookblah 3y ago
  I mean your experiences are your experiences. Yes, there are a lot of people in their late 30s who are nice people. The 40 year old virgin can be a great person or a terrible person, the guy or girl fucking everything in sight in their youth can be as well. The girl who slept around in her youth isn't doomed to be a bad mother. I'm not hand waving it away "both sides" or "it depends", but you are making huge sweeping generalizations. Even framing it as "bad" vs "good" person is weird to me in this context. Anyway, I agree more with your approach than the actual number. Learn whatever lesson you need to learn and fix it. Be honest about it with your new partner. We all adjust our risk to others based on said factors. Obviously, if you have red flags I'm going to either need more assurance or time, and everybody has the ability to say no for whatever reason. If you told me you stopped fucking everything in sight last week and wanted a monogamous relationship now I'd have my doubts. This isn't license to be stupid.
spacebanana7 3y ago
Cumulative STI risk is a real concern for individuals with many sexual partners. In the US, 0.4% of adults have HIV [1]. With >20 sexual partners the cumulative exposure becomes meaningful. Naively, 20 repetitions of 0.4% gets 7.89% exposure risk. However, this is likely an underestimate if you're willing to assume that people with lots of sexual partners tend to have sex with each other disproportionately often. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prevalence_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_... Interpret with caution because this figure varies a lot by locale, gender, sexuality and other factors.
- sneak 3y ago
  > In the US, 0.4% of adults have HIV [1]. With >20 sexual partners the cumulative exposure becomes meaningful. Naively, 20 repetitions of 0.4% gets 7.89% exposure risk. Nope. The 0.4% is overwhelmingly concentrated in men who have sex with men. It's approximately an order of magnitude lower in women. Based on your envelope math, I should have a >90% chance of having HIV, but that's nowhere near the truth (and I don't).
  - spacebanana7 3y ago
    > The 0.4% is overwhelmingly concentrated in men who have sex with men. It's approximately an order of magnitude lower in women. I added a note to interpret with caution because many factors can significantly affect this figure. Some states have an order of magnitude difference from others, potentially offsetting the MSM factor you mention [1]. > Based on your envelope math, I should have a >90% chance of having HIV The envelope math was exposure not contraction. If you used or condom, or even just received oral, it's quite possible you didn't get HIV even if your partner did. [1] Compare WY with GA - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Hiv-us-map-2017.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_the_United_States#...
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > The 0.4% is overwhelmingly concentrated in men who have sex with men. It's approximately an order of magnitude lower in women. True, but it's also true that male-to-female transmission is easier than female-to-male transmission, which makes the odds better for the man in any given encounter. I'm not sure what the systemic effect is.
lumost 3y ago
While the statement reads this way, and should be rewritten - the OPs underlying point is that as time goes by it becomes progressively less likely that a 6 month/2 year/5 year/10 year relationship has a distinct meaning for your partner or you. From the folks who are 70+ in the dating pool - this trend has reached the point that they simply don't want to take the time on a relationship even if they are in good health (particularly as bad times are around the corner). This is more about overall life experience than number of partners. I wouldn't be surprised if its just a reflection of people's understanding of their own mortality which emerges sometime around the mid-30s/40s.
BowBun 3y ago
I was curious about the other comment about divorce rates and pre-marital sex, so I looked it up. The results are from a government survey, so it's a pretty unbiased source. The reported outcomes could be scrutinized since I think the site I link is a bit of a traditional values kind of site. But between these numbers and your personal feelings, I think the data speaks more - https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-link-between-premarital-sex-and-marital-stability/ https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-li... More broadly though, all your deductive reasoning doesn't mean jack! We're talking about human behaviors over large scales, not to mention billions of people we aren't even measuring from other countries/cultures. I think trying to put labels on what these people think and go through from the comfort of your desk chair is presumptuous.
Mezzie 3y ago
> if I was 40+ and met someone who hadn't experienced that in this day and page it's probably more likely they had also had some social hang up that you just haven't learned about. Can confirm. Am 35 and never dated and had MAJOR issues. The part that sucks is it also basically means I can never date. I'm much healthier now and could probably be a decent partner (part of the reason I never dated before is I was aware that I wasn't in a space to be a good partner), but nobody is interested in a 35 year old woman with no experience so it's not going to happen. We're in a situation where people should date even if they can't handle a relationship because if they don't, they'll be too old and locked out altogether.

pcthrowaway 3y ago

> No offense, but think this honestly says a lot more about your own views and what your project on others than some kind of generalized statement. Yeah, it's a bit of an antiquated attitude at this point. If you're monogamous, you should be over the moon to be her last partner. The one she chose after doing extensive field research.

anotherhue 3y ago
'Chose' implies that _she_ chose to end all other relationships. Field research works both ways.
Gud 3y ago
[flagged]
- hef19898 3y ago
  Oh dear...
  - themaninthedark 3y ago
    Is there something wrong with someone decided to marry a person based on their wealth rather than on physical or emotional attraction?
    - hef19898 3y ago
      That is an interesting way to read the, now luckily dead, comment I replied to.
wruza 3y ago
The suggested dynamics implies that the other parties selection pool stays constant, which is not true at all ages.
worthless-trash 3y ago
Just because its old, doens't mean its wrong.
- CuriouslyC 3y ago
  Maybe it was right for a different world. That world doesn't exist anymore though, and it's never coming back no matter how much conservatives try to knee jerk us into the 19th century.
  - theandrewbailey 3y ago
    The world might have changed, but human nature and sexuality have not. We're still the same damn species, so the same rules apply.
    - CuriouslyC 3y ago
      Human sexuality is 100% culture dependent though. There are tribes where people are promiscuous, and tribes where men have multiple wives, and both of those traditions definitely predate rigid monogamy. Human nature is people want to have sex, and will form lasting relationships for mutual benefit.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      Ideas of human sexuality are ones shaped and formed by the culture they are within, which can change even in short timelines. Unless you like the idea that the warlord gets all the women and you get nothing?
  - meinmissoula 3y ago
    It seems like several different things are getting intertwined here and people are arguing past each other based on perceived "sides" and largely imagined positions being projected onto one another. You can have gender equality and feminism without casual sex. Many young people today, both male and female, feel like the current system they're embedded in is frustrating and unfulfilling. Everyone's personal preferences are equally valid. We should accept that people who express unease or unhappiness with the current dominant cultural norms pressed upon them have legitimate feelings, rather than attack and insult them by suggesting their desires belong in "the 19th century".
bt4u 3y ago
[dead]
trentearl 3y ago
Is it antiquated if most humans living today still think that way?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- k__ 3y ago
  Do "most" humans think that way?
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    Yes, unless you're a racist who restricts your definition of humans to white westerners... Most of the global human population still has values which are 'traditional' relative to the average white westerner, but white westerners often have a blind spot for that and reveal this blindspot when they say things like "the whole world" to mean western nations specifically, and "the rest of the world" to mean Europe but not America.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- pixl97 3y ago
  If for some reason most humans thought the Earth was flat, the idea would still be antiquated.
  - trentearl 3y ago
    Yes that is true, but that is a scientific fact and is not an appropriate comparison when talking about human populations and their approach to pair bonding, which is driven mostly by culture. So no, it’s not antiquated and your response requires looking at humanity through a very narrow and biased lens. Westerners can still appreciate our values while being in the minority. I do.
stuckinhell 3y ago
In age where an incredible amount of scientific research is fraudulent, even ivy league university presidents are resigning... I think I'll take ideals that have survived for thousands of years over dodgy conclusions from likely fraudulent and unrepeatable data.
- phailhaus 3y ago
  Appeal to Tradition, classic fallacy. [1] Which ideals? Slavery has survived for thousands of years, does that make it better? Took thousands of years to develop the concept of capitalism, should we have skipped it? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition
  - stuckinhell 3y ago
    The ones about marriage and the relationships between men and women than exist in nearly every civilization in the world for thousands of years. I think the jury is out on the modern world, as many slaves in middle ages lived far better than the capitalist "slave" workers in the America, India, Philippines, today.
    - phailhaus 3y ago
      The reason why they had such similar ideals is because none of them had effective birth control. That was just developed in the 20th century. Pre-marital sex is no longer an issue, you no longer have to marry someone just because of your raging hormones.
      - mensetmanusman 3y ago
        However, the jury is still out because many existing cultures are disappearing by choice.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    Instead simply trust the experts... oh wait. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
vGPU 3y ago
Yes, the 10th owner of the Honda civic. You get to take her to her 400,000th mile!
Dudester230602 3y ago
N-th partner when she was 19 or last partner when she is 38... Tough choice.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
Alternatively, you can simply be the next rock to be turned over and moved away from. Nothing guarantees you are the one, nor the last partner.

wvh 3y ago

A higher number of sexual partners impairs pair bonding. And obviously if that number is around 23 partners, the odds are not great. I'm not a traditionalist myself, I'm merely stating there are real non-political non-moral reasons to view a high partner count as not conducive to long-term relationship satisfaction.

Nursie 3y ago
You’ll have some good peer-reviewed study on this bonding I presume? The kind that factors in how much people lie about this stuff?
- causality0 3y ago
  Wouldn't that just be a statistical law? The Lindy's effect? The more partners you have, the more partners you will have before the end of your life.
- alfnor 3y ago
  > For women marrying since the start of the new millennium: > Women with 10 or more partners were the most likely to divorce, but this only became true in recent years; > Women with 3-9 partners were less likely to divorce than women with 2 partners; and, > Women with 0-1 partners were the least likely to divorce. https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-link-between-premarital-sex-and-marital-stability https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-li... > In our sample, only 23 percent of the individuals who got married over the course of the study had had sex solely with the person they married. That minority of men and women reported higher marital quality than those who had had sex with other partners prior to marriage. We further found that the more sexual partners a woman had had before marriage, the less happy she reported her marriage to be. This association was not statistically significant for men. https://before-i-do.org/ https://before-i-do.org/ > We investigated sex differences in shoulder to hip ratios (SHR) and waist to hip ratios (WHR), and their relationships to different features of sexual behavior. Males with high SHR and females with low WHR reported sexual intercourse at an earlier age, more sexual partners, more extra-pair copulations (EPC), and having engaged in more instances of intercourse with people who were involved in another relationship (i.e., having themselves been EPC partners). The predictive value of these morphological features was highly sex-specific. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(02)00149-6 https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(02)00149-6 > Past sexual promiscuity and sexual fantasies (Predictions 10 and 11). In both contexts, a partner’s concealed past sexual promiscuity (promiscuity) was rated as one of the more upsetting forms of deception (about 1 SD above the overall mean). Ratings did not differ by sex (ps > .05), failing to support Prediction 10. Prediction 11 was supported in the long term, with men’s ratings of a partner’s concealed sexual fantasies about others (sexual fantasy) relatively higher than women’s. There was no significant sex difference in the short term (p > .05). These results mirror those observed for sexual infidelity and flirtation and further suggest that the risk of cuckoldry constitutes a potent form of strategic interference for men in the long-term mating context. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167204271303 https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167204271303

rainworld 3y ago

Modern (wo)man encounters human nature, finds it lacking, attempts to bend it to his or her will, fails miserably, makes everyone miserable in the process, and learns nothing from the experience.

wccrawford 3y ago
I think you can leave out "modern" because I'm pretty sure that's a tale as old as time.

saiya-jin 3y ago

Well, yes and no. Nobody wants to be that guy marrying a girl who slept around when younger to compensate some issues, 'discover herself' or whatever was the justification, if there even was one. I can imagine it should be the same from the other side, but for some reason that's not always the case. Also from health perspective you play statistics game with plethora of bacteria, amoebes and viruses that can easily make you infertile or get a cancer few decades down the road. The thing is, people don't change. They evolve, slowly, over long time as life brings whatever it brings. But bad people don't become good. A guy fucking everything that moves ain't gonna become that dream father of your kids that you can rely on anytime, especially through tough times (and they always come, one of few sure things in life). There can be multiple good reasons why anybody in their late 30s had only 1 or two partners before and they would be a great partner for rest of life. I am struggling to find a single reason how opposite would be considered a good scenario and any kind of advantage, rather just massive warning signs. Personally, I'd say 5-10 and not more. Whatever lesson you need to get from relationships, it will be covered. After that, unless people are not already emotionally dead inside, its just heading in that direction step by step. Everytime you fall in love and breakup, a bit of your heart is not coming back (which is not bad per se, scars tell our stories and should give us some valuable lessons, but those lessons should be learned from). And fucking around for fucking around sake or chasing some numbers nobody cares about is plain immature and stupid. Identify what you are compensating for, fix the underlying problem, there is always one and its usually some unresolved crap from childhood, missing good father figure or similar. Its not great and glorified like some teen movies may make you believe, but pretty consistently a sad picture with all corresponding consequences. You don't have to trust a random internet stranger, over time you will see plenty of this around you in some form as you grow older, just look for it.

ookblah 3y ago
I mean your experiences are your experiences. Yes, there are a lot of people in their late 30s who are nice people. The 40 year old virgin can be a great person or a terrible person, the guy or girl fucking everything in sight in their youth can be as well. The girl who slept around in her youth isn't doomed to be a bad mother. I'm not hand waving it away "both sides" or "it depends", but you are making huge sweeping generalizations. Even framing it as "bad" vs "good" person is weird to me in this context. Anyway, I agree more with your approach than the actual number. Learn whatever lesson you need to learn and fix it. Be honest about it with your new partner. We all adjust our risk to others based on said factors. Obviously, if you have red flags I'm going to either need more assurance or time, and everybody has the ability to say no for whatever reason. If you told me you stopped fucking everything in sight last week and wanted a monogamous relationship now I'd have my doubts. This isn't license to be stupid.

spacebanana7 3y ago

Cumulative STI risk is a real concern for individuals with many sexual partners. In the US, 0.4% of adults have HIV [1]. With >20 sexual partners the cumulative exposure becomes meaningful. Naively, 20 repetitions of 0.4% gets 7.89% exposure risk. However, this is likely an underestimate if you're willing to assume that people with lots of sexual partners tend to have sex with each other disproportionately often. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prevalence_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_... Interpret with caution because this figure varies a lot by locale, gender, sexuality and other factors.

sneak 3y ago
> In the US, 0.4% of adults have HIV [1]. With >20 sexual partners the cumulative exposure becomes meaningful. Naively, 20 repetitions of 0.4% gets 7.89% exposure risk. Nope. The 0.4% is overwhelmingly concentrated in men who have sex with men. It's approximately an order of magnitude lower in women. Based on your envelope math, I should have a >90% chance of having HIV, but that's nowhere near the truth (and I don't).
- spacebanana7 3y ago
  > The 0.4% is overwhelmingly concentrated in men who have sex with men. It's approximately an order of magnitude lower in women. I added a note to interpret with caution because many factors can significantly affect this figure. Some states have an order of magnitude difference from others, potentially offsetting the MSM factor you mention [1]. > Based on your envelope math, I should have a >90% chance of having HIV The envelope math was exposure not contraction. If you used or condom, or even just received oral, it's quite possible you didn't get HIV even if your partner did. [1] Compare WY with GA - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Hiv-us-map-2017.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_the_United_States#...
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > The 0.4% is overwhelmingly concentrated in men who have sex with men. It's approximately an order of magnitude lower in women. True, but it's also true that male-to-female transmission is easier than female-to-male transmission, which makes the odds better for the man in any given encounter. I'm not sure what the systemic effect is.

lumost 3y ago

While the statement reads this way, and should be rewritten - the OPs underlying point is that as time goes by it becomes progressively less likely that a 6 month/2 year/5 year/10 year relationship has a distinct meaning for your partner or you. From the folks who are 70+ in the dating pool - this trend has reached the point that they simply don't want to take the time on a relationship even if they are in good health (particularly as bad times are around the corner). This is more about overall life experience than number of partners. I wouldn't be surprised if its just a reflection of people's understanding of their own mortality which emerges sometime around the mid-30s/40s.

BowBun 3y ago

I was curious about the other comment about divorce rates and pre-marital sex, so I looked it up. The results are from a government survey, so it's a pretty unbiased source. The reported outcomes could be scrutinized since I think the site I link is a bit of a traditional values kind of site. But between these numbers and your personal feelings, I think the data speaks more - https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-link-between-premarital-sex-and-marital-stability/ https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-li... More broadly though, all your deductive reasoning doesn't mean jack! We're talking about human behaviors over large scales, not to mention billions of people we aren't even measuring from other countries/cultures. I think trying to put labels on what these people think and go through from the comfort of your desk chair is presumptuous.

Mezzie 3y ago

> if I was 40+ and met someone who hadn't experienced that in this day and page it's probably more likely they had also had some social hang up that you just haven't learned about. Can confirm. Am 35 and never dated and had MAJOR issues. The part that sucks is it also basically means I can never date. I'm much healthier now and could probably be a decent partner (part of the reason I never dated before is I was aware that I wasn't in a space to be a good partner), but nobody is interested in a 35 year old woman with no experience so it's not going to happen. We're in a situation where people should date even if they can't handle a relationship because if they don't, they'll be too old and locked out altogether.