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There has been some new study recently showing that female promiscuity, just like male promiscuity, is limited to a small subset of the total population. Before I deleted X, I saw several posts asking why non-promiscuous men are still chasing the "hoes" (and are complaining about them) instead of concentrating on the majority of women that aren't. I want to propose a hypothesis.
But first, a digression. Imagine a happily married gay couple, Fred and Steve. It's Saturday afternoon, their adopted kids won't be back home for a couple more hours, all the chores are done, and Fred's looking bored and restless. Steve suggests a quickie to pass the time. Is Fred down for it? I would bet my money on yes.
Now replace Fred with Frida. Suddenly, the odds are completely different. I am not saying that all women are not into random acts of intercourse, but the proportion of them that are dtf is low enough that reversing the bet makes total financial sense.
What does this have to do with promiscuity? My hypothesis is that it's significantly correlated with overall sex drive in women. (Feel free to nominate me for the Ig Nobel prize.) There are some non-promiscuous, but libidinous women, except they don't stay on the dating market long, just like reasonably prices houses in good locations are almost never seen on Zillow. The visible parts of the dating market are promiscuous women and women with low sex drive. In the past the concepts of "putting out", "marital duty" obscured this dynamic, but modern women have been brought up knowing they don't owe anyone sex and don't have to hide their (dis)interest. And given that single lives are now easier than ever, why bother with trying to date such women at all? Better to concentrate on the visibly promiscuous women or on the age cohorts that are just entering the dating market, both of them have a higher share of women with a high enough sex drive.
Generalize that further.
The people who are visible on the dating market are often 'broken' in some way that makes their ability to maintain long-term relationships much more stunted (especially under modern conditions).
The ones who are capable of stable pair-bonding and are generally normal in terms of attractiveness, life-put-togetherness, from happy families, are by sheer definition, the ones most likely to get locked in to a stable relationship early and not leave. The pool, at any given time, is mostly inhabited by the broken and you have to get lucky to chance onto a viable partner in their brief period of availability.
It creates a double-sided Market for Lemons as people learn to expect the worst from each given encounter and thus are ever less willing to extend commitment or effort to the next person.
So don't limit it just to promiscuity and libido, include emotional stability and familial instincts and generally being 'sane' enough to envision a committed relationship with that person. If the person is aware that they're broken, they even have an incentive to hide that from potential matches, so there's already a layer of suspicion going in.
In terms of promiscuous women, I think that they get the focus because sexual availability is one of the few things that's relatively easy to sus out in short order, and if you've decided you're unlikely to find a life partner anytime soon, getting sex in the meantime is a consolation prize of sorts. Or a self-esteem booster.
This is an issue that the dating apps not only haven't solved, they've exacerbated.
They give you less up front information than you'd need to make a solid judgment, they disallow searching out specific characteristics and they show you people at seemingly random that you know almost nothing about other than they, too, have been unable to secure commitment.
It enrages me. I know with precision the qualities I'm looking for. I know what qualities I want to avoid. I'm acutely aware how rare these positive qualities are, DOUBLY so among those who are still single. So I want to be given tools to zero in on these people more directly, and not absorb the waste of time and additional risk of figuring out if this person who deigned to match with me is sane or not, whilst operating on the assumption they are not. When the person I'm searching for is so unique, the search tools need to be powerful. And search is, on the technology side, a solved problem, I should be able to pluck my potential partners out of the ether with ease.
But this is simply not a thing you are allowed to do in the current era.
The older you get as well and as your drive begins to dwindle, the long-term appeal of any of it diminishes significantly; and you lose considerable interest in it over time. Certainly the best time to take advantage of me would’ve been the ripe age bracket of my very early 20’s. I discussed this with a friend some years back and he remarked, “Once I hit the age of 40, I’m not taking any new calls… No, I don’t want to know you, I don’t want to meet you, no; I don’t care about you; leave me alone…” That was about the age he just wanted to officially stop everything, consolidate his gains and what he’s made for himself in life, call it quits and live out the rest of his days in peace.
Misery loves company. He and I had a hard enough life growing up as it was. I’m just about with him. Even though I wanted a family, I have no problems being happy on my own.
Can't lie, I'm contemplating that deadline myself, in my late 30's.
Every failed connection or relationship that goes nowhere unfortunately makes me bayesian update towards the likelihood that I'll just never find someone that I can make it work with.
Thing is my drive isn't dwinding yet. I'm not feeling 'old' by any means yet. I still feel vital and effective and the misery is coming from trying to encounter someone whose interests and values align when most of those interests and values are selected against by the default overculture.
There's an odd disconnect these days. I'm able to attract women... but I'm less interested in playing the games and I'm better able to perceive the immediate disqualifying factors. The women I have available are not bad people but I don't expect that anything I initiate between us would last... so why toy around with each other?
I can sustain my current life routine indefinitely (until AI disruption finally hits) and every foray I make into the dating market gives me yet more reasons to stay out of it.
His argument was persuasive and he didn’t have to do much convincing to get me on board. People like me were just placed in the wrong century. Like you I’m also not feeling old, but I’m definitely not 18 either. A lot of people are going to come due for a very rude awakening in the years to come and I’m not normally one to be the guy to gloat “I told you so,” but I’m definitely going to be the guy with a smirk that says “I told you so.” I know a couple of those people already.
I was never a guy who played games when it came to interpersonal relationships. If it isn’t a board game, a card game, a video game or a bedroom game, I don’t play it. You don’t play with people’s lives unless you want to invite some serious trouble into your life. I’d have thought that point was made a long time ago. Enjoy each other’s time, shared interests and company, and be a family. Why complicate and risk destroying it all out of mental instability? I know a lot of women on the same level as you. I don’t oblige them because I don’t think they’d be a good mother. I know too much about their history; and that’s not where their mind has been.
I have enough in the interest department to keep me occupied, and enough interests and things I like to do in my private life to keep me occupied and entertained until the end of time and there’s enough people in my family and in my close friend’s family that I’ve had an enormous impact on that leaves me with a feeling of achievement I’ll be proud of on my death bed. The most important document I own is a 3-page essay my best friend’s younger brother (who always viewed me as an older sibling, like a lot of people close to me) wrote me at a time when I was feeling down many years ago. In it he dropped a line saying, “Why do you want a son so much when you already have one?” I always think of that line.
Being an older sibling to others can be rewarding, it can simulate some aspects of parenthood. But full parenthood is a class of its own, and raising a child of your own from conception is the full undiluted parenthood experience. It's full of stress and backaches but also full of intense amazing moments. It is an experience worth trying for at least once if a good partner can be found.
If a man can be made presentable to college age women, then that is the group he should try to find a good woman from, as they have less relationship baggage. It might just be a matter of luck or fate though with how few eligible bachelorettes there are these days.
That’s what I’ve always been after but it’s eluded me my whole life.
I had an interesting position between my sibling and the rest of our extended family. A lot of my 1st generation cousins are much older than me, the youngest is like 12 years older or something like that, and they would always be hanging around themselves or our parents. They’d encourage me to spend time with them and a lot of times I did, but I was clearly out of their age bracket from being able to meaningfully associate with them. The younger half was much younger than me. The oldest was within 2 years of me and the rest between 5-20 years younger. So I always stood on an island that was the middle ground, where nobody else my age was. My sibling always associated with my 1st cousins, I was always the “big brother” and mentor to my 2nd cousins and I stuck with them.
My friends interestingly enough were born the same year as me or the year prior. But they also had big families and whenever we’d spend time, their parents would encourage them to tag along with us and we’d also be in charge of them. So they participated in many of the same activities we did and we never treated them as a separate class most of the time (but not always). They always looked up to us as well.
A big, extended, and physically close family is a nice thing to be a part of. I'm from large extended families on both sides myself. I did happen to notice that my desire for children increased as I moved much farther away from the family area, as I missed the family atmosphere that similar aged "child-free" friends could not provide.
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