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I understand your other criteria to various degrees, but I still don't understand why I'm supposed to care so much about the number of past sex partners. It is pretty much irrelevant to me when evaluating a potential long-term romantic partner unless maybe it is so ridiculously high that it indicates some kind of actual severe sex addiction. But that would be a number in the high 100s, probably. Actually, for me it would probably be more important that the woman had had at least one sex partner in the past, rather than that she had not had too many. I'm not sure that I would want to take on the risk of being a wife's first sex partner and thus having her views of me passed through a filter of inexperience.
I mean, 6 is above average for western women, isn’t it, and he admits that he’s being arbitrary with the actual numbers.
‘Not noticeably promiscuous’ seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for in a partner for compatibility-and-expectations reasons- my understanding is that most secular westerners expect to have sex before getting engaged, but how soon varies a lot from person to person- or more precisely filter bubble to filter bubble- and it’s a reasonable proxy for ‘coming from a filter bubble with courtship norms acceptable to mine’. Welcoming of corrections, though.
Yeah hard to set a line for 'not noticeably promiscuous' but 5 sex partners feels a tad low for somebody who's 29.
On the market from 15, could do that with 6 2-year relationships or just say 3 4-year relationships and one extra 'body' in every dating period between whilst feeling things out.
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It's actually insane to me to read the parade of guys coming to these comments to express that the criterion for less than six sexual partners is strange or puzzling or not fair. I grew up in a community in which sex before marriage was a scandal, where parents actually cared about it, and where the expectation was to wait until marriage, and I'm younger than most of you!
These attitudes were handed down directly from a Christian moral understanding of sexual ethics so it certainly shouldn't be surprising even if you disagree with it. So the response of "Huh?? So strange!" is baffling to me in a forum where so many are otherwise eager to go to bat for Christianity if purely for the sake of argument.
I must say I myself find strange the new pagan-Western ritual of engaging in a series of pretend-marriages wherein you cohabitate, have sex, and mix finances with multiple partners before you finally vow lifetime partnership to whichever one you happen to be with when you realize the window for children is closing. And then have your first child in your mid-thirties.
Are you sure that the people who "bat for Christianity" are the same people saying it's not a big deal in this thread? I do the opposite of bat for any religion, so what's it to me?
I already know you're the Indian doctor atheist transhumanist novelist. So if I ever generalize in such a way again you can be sure to exclude yourself from the group for the sake of my point.
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I agree with you that some people pretend not to understand why other men would want a virgin (or as close to virgin as possible).
That said, the US is no longer governed by traditional Christian mores. You may bemoan that and seek smaller communities where the norms remain, but it shouldn't surprise you that a lot of people nowadays genuinely do find it strange to care so much about body counts.
FWIW, I actually agree with you that this is fucked up and in my personal life I prefer something much closer to traditional Christian ethics even though I am not Christian.
I do not miss that being the law or de facto law, though.
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And yet, you still didn't actually answer the question, which is "why are we supposed to care so much?"- probably because you're just taking "traditionalist/Christian sexual ethics are correct in all cases" for granted and going from there.
You could even get there from first principles and evopsych as it applies to the majority of people in any given place and time; you could argue that the liberal approach converges on the Christian one from a risk-management point of view so reality bears out that you should live by those rules, or you could come up with something different than those.
Or you could just say you don't like it and that's the way it is (and at least maintain a modicum of intellectual honesty), then extrapolate from there, since for n = 1 that might not be a particularly strong argument.
Sure, speculate about my irrational motivations! Try to turn this into a debate about the object level while attempting to convince the audience that I've already tried and failed to debate the object level myself! Just don't act like you're surprised body count is a consideration among most men.
Again:
Are you surprised by faceh's inclusion of that criterion? I suspect you aren't really; and I suspect most commenters here aren't, despite the chorus of scoffs about its irrationality. My first comment was expressing shock that there are so many here to claim not to care, because they're the weird ones.
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Your native community's sexual ethics do not surprise me, in the sense of me being surprised that they exist. When I say that I don't understand, I mean that, while I abstractly intellectually can mentally model the inner experience of men who are different from me in this way, I do not share their feelings. It is similar to how, I like broccoli and some people hate broccoli. I can mentally model not liking broccoli, but I don't really understand it from the perspective of my own tastes, all I can say is "oh well those people's tastes are different from mine".
I see your rhetorical sleight of hand. This is not a small or long-forgotten culture that you're hand-waving.
Idk man. Thinking of my wife with another man is acutely distressing, and I'm not anxious to convince myself that it shouldn't be. Maybe that's just a matter of liking broccoli.
Thinking of a lover being with another man in the present or the future distresses me. Thinking of a lover being with another man before I even met her does not affect me in the least bit.
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Its associated with divorce risk after a certain point.
Of course YOU don't have to care about it.
But try to tell a single guy "yes you should settle for the girl that has like 6-12 guys she banged previously but don't worry I'm sure YOU'RE the one she sticks with and has NO remaining thoughts or feelings for the previous ones" with a straight face.
Reading your link, you sure you interpred this correctly?
There's a high peak at 2 previous partners, then a dip back down for 3 to 9. Then back up at 10 being maybe 3% higher than 2.
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Divorce statistics shouldn't be a necessary condition to explain the male aversion to wifing up a woman with a past. If women's feelings such as the ick are legitimate, so are men's feelings and preferences.
If someone asked me why I don't eat roadkill, I wouldn't pullout graphs and studies about the longitudinal effects of consuming motorway by-product—I'd just shrug and say the thought of eating roadkill is revolting.
I have to say that I found the roadkill metaphor extremely insightful. My belief that female promiscuity is unwise is fundamentally disconnected from my opinion that female promiscuity is unappealing. I don't think less of the moral character of a woman who's been raped - indeed, the crisis might even present her with an opportunity to demonstrate her virtue in some way. But it does give me the male equivalent of the proverbial ick, just as it would if she'd had casual sex voluntarily, or been divorced, or tripped and fallen down the stairs onto a man.
I think that this is also why I feel a profound discomfort when I see other men list things like "five or fewer sex partners" as their standard for a woman. Because they're obviously using the more rational standard of the woman's wisdom - they're judging who's wiser, the woman who's had sex with five men or the woman who's had sex with twenty. But in my gut, this looks to me like, do I want the barrel of wine with five spoonfuls of shit in it or the barrel of wine with twenty spoonfuls of shit in it, and I'm just thinking, uh, no, I don't want any of the shit-wine, thanks, I don't care how exactly the shit got there, I don't care to grade it on a curve, and if that's all the wine I can afford I'd rather just be a teetotaler.
I'm pretty sure you can safely eat roadkill if you manage to find the right roadkill and you cook it right. But I'd still rather just not do that.
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I would never tell a man to settle for a girl, though, unless maybe he is desperate to have kids and is reaching the age where even a man has to just take the best out of whatever mother options are available or else go without progeny.
What I would tell him is that if he actually likes the girl, he shouldn't let the number of guys she has banged stop him. And if he just simply has a visceral repulsion to that idea, I'd say fine, then go find some other girl. But I would recommend that he examines his own feelings and tries to figure out whether this is a true repulsion, like just not being into fat people, for example, or whether this is just a temporary insecurity that goes away with more experience.
Instead of recommending to a man that he settle, I'd recommend that he either goes and finds more girls or that he becomes more comfortable with having no girls, since being alone is better than being in a bad relationship.
I wouldn't worry too much, abstractly, about whether her promiscuity made her less likely to stick with me, if she was making me happy in other ways and I didn't see any evidence that she was actually pursuing other guys. Especially given that, since it is extremely easy for an attractive woman to get laid, for a woman to only have had sex with 12 guys strikes me as almost closer to celibacy than to promiscuity. Any attractive woman could easily have sex with 1000 men if she for some reason wanted to.
As for thoughts and feelings for previous lovers, I would find it a bit weird if she didn't have any at all. If by thoughts and feelings you mean that she was still carrying a torch for them, pining over them, etc. then sure, I think that would be weird and I would not be into that at all. But I would find it strange and almost inhuman if she completely put them out of her mind as if they had never existed. I guess you probably mean the carrying a torch version, though.
Gotta disagree, after decades of internet arguments I have lost any ability to tell genuine difference between two. Nearly every "true repulsion" is just a "temporary insecurity" according to someone else. "Not being into fat people"? There is a loud crowd of activists who will try to argue you into that its your social and cultural environment speaking, not ingrained psychological repulsion. Into monogamous relationships? Not difficult to find a polyadvocate who will argue its a temporary insecurity enlightened people learn to deal with it / it disappears. Repulsion to seeing two males being intimate? A different, overlapping crowd will argue that it is a temporary insecurity you need to deal with. Not gay? If you are good-looking man and go to gay bar, someone is likely to try arguing otherwise.
It is not limited to romance and sex either. I say it feels bad when I have less things and status than my peer group: one person will reply that it is a natural response to inequality, other will reply that I am just being jealous for no good reason. Don't like taxes? one person will reply that it is natural response to government taking money, others will argue that you have misguided idea about stealing.
Also, for whatever is worth, my opinion on skinny vs chubby is one of those responses that has changed over time (/anecdata)
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I mean, the average woman simply doesn’t desire the same variety of sexual partners that many men do. She desires a strong sexual relationship with a single man, which includes lots of non sexual affection, intimacy, caretaking, etc.
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