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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5634 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 12, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, in the CWR thread there was an exchange where @2rafa got a bit piled on for claiming that most men don't have lots of casual sex not because they can't, but because they don't particularly want to compared to competing activities. I'm not interested in relitigating the conversation, but the following bit struck me (conversation massively snipped for the relevant parts):

From @2rafa:

Because most men do, in fact, show a revealed preference for long term relationships. [...] I think most men who don't pursue sleeping with huge numbers of women don't do so because they don't want to, not because they can't.

And from @Amadan:

[Y]our rather touchingly naive view that down deep we're all just looking for our waifu is not really true. [...] But most men who don't do it [have sex with large numbers of women], unless they have strong religious or other reasons not to, absolutely would do it if they had the ability.

Now admittedly I am one of the people with "strong religious ... reasons not to", but this strikes me as off somehow? I mean, sure, most men have some level of desire to have lots of sex with different women, but people have lots of desires, and just because they have a desire doesn't mean they'd preferentially fulfill it, especially if it competes with other ones.

Which leads to my question. What fraction of men (say, in their twenties) are better described as (a) "looking for [their] waifu" - i.e. want to find a good wife (and then, presumably, also have lots of sex with her), with little serious interest in casual sex, or (b) "absolutely would [have lots of casual sex] if they had the ability"?

For (heterosexual) men, which is/was more true of you? For anyone, what fraction of men do you think are are "team find a wife" vs "team casual sex"?

Which leads to my question. What fraction of men (say, in their twenties) are better described as (a) "looking for [their] waifu" - i.e. want to find a good wife (and then, presumably, also have lots of sex with her), with little serious interest in casual sex, or (b) "absolutely would [have lots of casual sex] if they had the ability"?

It really depends on the parameters of the question. In particular, I think the meaning of "if they had the ability" is under-specified and is being interpreted differently by different people responding.

If I imagine the world where casual sex is maximally easy -- I have a superpower that makes every woman instantly attracted to me, where I can just walk up to a random woman on the street and say "here's my address, meet me there at 7pm tonight and we'll have sex" and this works 100% of the time -- then I can't imagine ever wanting to get married or be in a monogamous relationship. Let's also assume there are no other risks/costs associated with this behavior like STDs, pregnancies, or getting robbed.

If we dial up the difficulties and costs associated with casual sex, then monogamy starts to look increasingly attractive, until we get to the real world in which I am happily married and have no intention of ever cheating on my wife.

So I think the exact details of the question matter a great deal.

I'm gay, but I've always wanted a permanent relationship. I don't know how representative I am though since I have a lot of issues around intimacy, sex, socializing. But I do get 'the want' when I see an attractive man.

Third Option - Most men don't want to do either.

Having a long term, monogamous relationship is hard and takes work.

Living a real-world player lifestyle is possible only with either a) crazy social status and wealth (Movie stars, athletes) or b) a normal guy putting a ton of work (getting into shape, being better than average with fashion and, mostly - running game like crazy and mostly failing).

I'd say most men don't want to do this (save for those who have religious or other personal/social strong bias for family) because the average returns to either are questionable. Divorce in the U.S. is 50/50 and not much better in Western Europe. Player lifestyle - while more attainable than many would think - operates on batters baseball levels of success; 25% (.250 batting average) is OK, 30% is a good season, and anything at or over 40% makes you a hall-of-famer.

There are far higher expected returns to putting in extra work into a career. Once you get out of minimum wage service industry level work (no offense to those who are still in it), top 20% performance is mostly an equation of hours worked and a little social / political awareness (either to move up in a large company, artfully job hop every 2 - 3 years, or to network effectively for external business in a small company). Top 10% is being able to make the jump to management. Top 1% is getting groovy with risk taking and truly understanding your market (and, yes, a spot of luck).

Which leads me to what I think is an interesting twist to the original question. Which would Men opt for; perfect wifey with no possibility of divorce / hen-pecking / dead bedroom, or 100% guaranteed discreet access to world class prostitutes. Again, caveats about personal morality / religiosity apply.

b) a normal guy putting a ton of work (getting into shape, being better than average with fashion and, mostly - running game like crazy and mostly failing).

I did this for several years and found the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. Juggling multiple cute girls is a lot of work and at least personally I found it better to spend my efforts on a single quality girl. Then I could spend my free time on hobbies rather than going out for drinks on a weeknight.

I know one of the more popular Pick Up Artist gurus talks about a theme he noticed during the heyday of that community. He divided PUAs into two camps, Thrill of the Hunt guys and Pleasure of Sex guys. Some guys are really into variety, while others are happy with a stable rotation of girls they can have better sex with compared to one night stands.

Yeah, presuming that men would have sex with as many women as possible if possible seems to come from a place of inexperience. I enjoy flirting and am good at it, but texting back and forth with five women at once literally takes all your time. It will consume your entire evening, and you won't have as nearly an in-depth conversation as you could have had one on one. I suspect that only the most dedicated womanizer could keep that pace up long-term.

Agree with all. IMHO - "single quality girl" is just harder to find because the median has fallen so drastically and the acceptance of personal hill-climbing (in the optimization sense) has picked up. It's hard to overstate the second order effects of online dating - even women who will readily admit to being all around satisfied in a relationship (monogamous or otherwise, serious and committed or otherwise) are aware of the literal hundreds of daily new options. That kind of pull is impossible to resist - man or woman. Imagine if your inbox had 100 new job offers (not marketing blast emails, I mean sign here for money job offers).

Again, I want to explicitly state I'm not trying to say "womenz bad." I see this as a pretty basic rational economic / incentive seeking behavior. To quote the poet Slim Charles "Game the same - just more fierce is all."

This is also complicated by the fact that modern culture effectively prohibits the best case for the non-casual route (a single-digit number of "wives" who you can expect fidelity from and who have to compete for your attention) much more effectively than it restricts the best case for the casual route (a new fling each week with a different girl). Comparing monogamy, even Leonardo de Caprio style serial monogamy, to the life of Wilt Chamberlain is an unfair comparison.

If you go to the full absolute power, no restraints level, the choice is between the sex life of Genghis Khan and the sex life of Louis XIV (final n-count just breaking into double figures). Lots of people, including Louis XIV, would go for the latter.

It's hard to tell/decide if I qualify to answer... but I have been alive for long enough and have the corresponding equipment, so:

I never felt like casual sex was something worth desiring. Even at peak teen hormones when my brain once or twice said "hey, what if this imaginary person we just made up from the ether randomly walked up to you and was very explicitly wanting some?", I couldn't go on without them having actual character and it turning into an actual relationship. Heck, during the two years when I was getting (mostly but not exclusively disturbing) vivid sex dreams, there was one with this imaginary LTR candidate in which we were both naked and deliberately keeping it non-sexual, and that actually worked for the whole thing.

But I've generally been way less interested in general than it seems like most people (male or female) are. There've only been two incidents ever where I was superficially attracted to someone almost immediately (once literally the first day at the Math and Science HS, and once literally the last day of college before a 2.5 year sebatical). There's been one person I was ever more than superficially attracted to, and I resisted those feelings for a while, because it seemed like we would not be long-term compatible (and that was when I'd been alive for 28 years).

I've been hit on far more than that. There was a period in HS / early college when people would tell me when they thought girls were conspicuously interested, but I think my "So what?" reaction put a stop to that. For some reason, men of all ages who have the opportunity seem to go through a phase where they try to convince me to get a girlfriend (as though that's something you can just do after graduating). Then most of them give up because I'm clearly not playing along.

Online dating sucks, because it's just names, ages, and locations, without incentive to click one in particular for the possibility of a meaningful profile. Every few years, I give one of these a look, realize there's nothing there whatsoever to interest me in anyone, and move on. People for people's sake doesn't really motivate me, sex or no. Likewise sex for sex's sake is not terribly interesting.

But I'm weird, so YMMV.

I think the whole idea of asking people "would you have lots of casual sex or look for a LTR if you could somehow seduce a new girl each evening" is useless, it's like asking "would you travel around the world or buy a nice house if you had a billion dollars". Most men don't have a billion dollars or the skills of a master seducer. Would we fight crime if we could fly and shoot lasers out of our eyes, or would we look for a quiet stable job as a reporter?

There's a simpler question that most men can answer: imagine you are married and have sex with your wife twice a week by saying, "sex tonight, hon?". The sex is nice, but perhaps you want more frequent sex, kinkier sex, sex that isn't limited by having to put kids to bed and waking up early five days a week, sex with more partners, younger partners, whatever. You decide to talk to your wife about it.

Your wife is a literal saint and says, "very well, I understand the limitations of married life, you can have as much casual sex with other women (or men) as you want and I won't hold it against you. You can spend as much time as you want on pursuing casual sex. I will still remain your wife, will love you as much as I love you now, will have sex with you twice a week, will remain faithful to you, you can have all of this in writing and notarized. There's only one stipulation: you can only have purely casual sex with other partners. If you start to develop feelings for anyone else, compensate them for sex or lie to have sex with them, the deal is off."

So now the choice is between "team wife" and "team wife AND casual sex". The second option literally has no drawbacks. How many men will actually put in the effort to at least double their sex frequency?

Hell, drop the marital sex to once a week, drop the requirements about feelings, money and lies. How many men will put in the effort in this situation? Maybe they will get a mistress/sugar baby. Maybe they'll join a sex club. How many will actually trawl Tinder and bars?

Speaking frankly, I would take the wife + casual sex deal in a heartbeat.

I mean, my sex life with my girlfriend is great, and given the choice between my current relationship and reliving my single and chasing girls days in my 20s, I'd prefer the former. But if I'm being offered the option of being able to pursue casual sex (or even just flirting) safe in the knowledge that my saint wife won't be upset and it wouldn't affect our marriage, then I would want to try it. I doubt I would pursue other women particularly vigorously, but if you're a guy who enjoys the chase (not necessarily a given) then this is all upside and no downside.

This is a not-exact diagram of what my relationship with my wife looks like*. So I can give you a rough number here: over a decade or so of this practice, the answer is roughly 1.5 other women per year on average, median and mode 1, some years zero. I often joke with the handful of people who are aware of our open status that people perceive an open relationship as the defining aspect of people's lives, I probably spend more time playing Golf in the average year than with other women, and I don't even like Golf I just get dragged into it socially/professionally every now and then. So the answer to this question:

How many men will put in the effort in this situation? Maybe they will get a mistress/sugar baby. Maybe they'll join a sex club. How many will actually trawl Tinder and bars?

Is, maybe every now and then, but probably more like once or twice a year than all the time. It's not a question of overall frequency within the year, that rounds to zero, so much as a period of treating it like a hobby for a time, then forgetting about it. I'll get an itch, much less like being uncontrollably horny than the same desire I would get to read a particular genre of book, and I spend a week or so finding a partner, then take a weekend day off and have some fun, then maintain that once a month for a while, then quietly let it drop when other things get in the way. Normally I keep chatting with other partners for some time, often but not always meeting up again at some point months years down the road if they reach out to me or I to them.

So on balance, one would not dedicate a lot of effort to it.

*The main differences would be that we don't have kids (yet, inshallah) and she is also interested in...interactions...with other women on her own or with me; while I am congenitally incapable of sex without any feelings getting involved.

My preferences are:

  1. Have a great LTR

  2. Have good casual dates and sex on occasion, maybe like once every month or two

  3. Be alone

  4. Have lots of casual dates and casual sex, like multiple times a week

I think most non-religious men would prioritize having lots of casual sex higher than me. Part of the reason why I put it so low is that I think I have "death grip syndrome", where my penis is desensitized to penis-in-vagina sex from over masturbation. In some ways masturbation is just more pleasurable than a hook up to me, and definitely much less work. If I had the sheer pleasure from casual sex(just on the physical side of things, ignoring emotional effects) that it seems most men have, I'd rate it higher.

That said right now I don't really have any of those options right now. I'd describe my dating life as lack luster dates a few times a year.

edit

There is as reason people have less sex as a relationship goes on...

edit

The emotional, mental and physical work that goes into creating the sort of experience I consider 'peak intimacy' is so high, that I can't imagine how some people manage to provide that to multiple partners.

I don't think this is true for that reason. 'Literal amount of time spent with partner' is something that varies between relationships such that 'significant time spent with two people' isn't that big a barrier. Which means it's a much smaller effect than 'jealousy' ... or the very significant desire for your partner to be exclusive with you, evolved because you want them invested in your children. But yeah, multiple serious partners is something very few can manage well.

edit

I generally dislike this framing because it implies that individuals can trace their desires and emotions to the evolutionary root.

Anything from 'desire to eat food' to 'anger that friend betrayed you + wanting to get back at them' have really obvious evolutionary reasons. Of course, very important details of how they 'work' aren't obvious from evolution, and it's easy to say untrue things with evopsych speculation like 'we evolved to be TRIBAL animals so we have a dunbar number of twenty and cant have more friends than that", but it's a very useful broad approach.

but the individuals feel those raw emotions untethered from their evolutionary cause.

The mechanisms involved are very tuned towards the causes though? And become meaningless outside those contexts. What purpose does jealousy have if you're not going to have children? Why not just ... not (as poly people do)? Of course, what purpose does sex have outside having children?

Datapoint of one, but I am a man who absent convictions against would still be simply not cut out for casual sex.

Let me flesh that out a bit. I don't actually think "wants to find a wife" is mutually exclusive with "wants lots of casual sex."

I think most men, given the opportunity to have lots of casual sex, would take advantage of it. The exceptions would be those who consider it immoral; either for religious reasons or because they are already in committed relationships.

Now of course some men who want lots of casual sex, and would happily sleep with a different woman every night, also want to find a permanent life partner. Such men, upon finding someone suitable, are likely (hopefully) to shift into the category of "Won't do it because it's immoral."

I would rephrase your question: given a choice between "Go with little or no sex until you find your wife" or "Sleep with lots of women until you find your wife," which do you think most men would choose?

Fair enough, you are clearly not the only one who's been misunderstand lately.

I meant to suggest that I think many men would prefer a wife they find very attractive and with whom they (hopefully/probably) have an active sex life to, say, a reasonable number of hookups or one night stands a year.

I would generally agree with this.

I'd say if I were faced with two choices where the quantity and quality of sex was roughly identical (though the quality is influenced by attractiveness) I would prefer a variety of plainer partners. Something like a harem of 6s or 7s vs a single 10.

Quite simply, the emotional validation of having multiple people willing to have sex with you is an extremely powerful motivator, to say nothing of the different personalities, techniques, preferences, and body types you would get with multiple partners. If there's an element of minor competition among them, so much the better.

I think most men, given the opportunity to have lots of casual sex, would take advantage of it. The exceptions would be those who consider it immoral; either for religious reasons or because they are already in committed relationships.

This is so alien to my thinking that I have trouble believing you are being serious. Sex is an intensely intimate experience. I can't imagine taking advantage of the opportunity to have lots of casual sex not because I find it immoral, but simply because I can barely handle that level of intimacy with one person with whom I'm already in a close relationship with. That level of intimacy just doesn't seem tolerable in a casual relationship to me.

A decent amount of men and a lot of women are like that. You might be demisexual.

This is so alien to my thinking that I have trouble believing you are being serious.

Clearly, one of us is guilty of typical-minding. It may be me, but it would take a lot of counter-evidence to convince me of this.

I don't necessarily think you are wrong about a large subset (even majority) of men. I'm just pointing out there are more categories than the two you laid out (1. would have lots of casual sex 2. wouldn't because its immoral), as neither of them describe me.

That's fair. I have the impression/intuition that getting casual sex would, to an extent, trade off against finding a wife; so my thought was that there might be a substantial number of men who would prioritize the "find a wife" side of the tradeoff to the extent that they are (relatively) uninterested in casual sex, even if they didn't find it particularly immoral. But maybe this is not the case. I fully admit that I am an unusual case here (I'm in the increasingly tiny minority that didn't have sex at all until getting married) and don't have a good sense of these things.

have the impression/intuition that getting casual sex would, to an extent, trade off against finding a wife; so my thought was that there might be a substantial number of men who would prioritize the "find a wife" side of the tradeoff to the extent that they are (relatively) uninterested in casual sex, even if they didn't find it particularly immoral.

My intuition is that this tradeoff exists in various contexts, but the landscape is quite a bit more complicated. There's the fact that having features and skills that are optimized for having lots of casual sex also are helpful for finding a wife, and so there's a lot of synergy. It's only when looking at the subset of men who are high in such features that the tradeoff exists. But in the general population, optimizing for one also optimizes for the other. And I think over the past half century or so, that factor has become more dominant, and the men for whom such a tradeoff exists have gotten less populous.

I think we have empirical evidence that men at the top of the top (professional athletes, monarchs) have both a wife who they deeply care for, and who's children he raises as his heirs, and also lots and lots of hookups. This is the clear utility maximum.

Let's also not overlook testosterone. Athletes are both young and flooded with the stuff by dint of lifestyle, even on the occasions when they don't happen to be juicing.

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