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Monogamous men in long-term relationships aren't doin too hot
A recent post by Aella goes over some statistics on marriage and relationships with a focus on the male perspective. The results are... pretty awful. It's a well-known fact that nearly half of all marriages end in divorce, 70% of which are initiated by women, and that family courts are heavily biased against men. This makes marriage an inherently risky proposition, as people are putting a substantial chunk of their life on the line on what amounts to coinflip odds.
So what about the men who pass that check and remain married? Is it all sunshine and rainbows for all of them? Well, obviously not, as there are common tropes of bitter old couples who argue with each other over tons of small things, and of couples where the passion has long since dissipated but they remain together out of convenience. What proportion of marriages are unfulfilling like this? There hasn't been much research or data on this but Aella reveals that the answer is, unfortunately, most of them.
On the question of "Are you satisfied with your sex life?", men are indeed quite satisfied if they're in relationships that are less than a year old, but the rate of agreement drops precipitously as the relationship progresses. By the time the relationship is 6-8 years old, men flip to being net-unsatisfied with their sex life. It continues getting worse and worse over time, although at a slower rate. For relationships that are 12+ years old, ~53% of men report being unsatisfied with their sex life compared to 41% who are satisfied. More than twice as many men report being severely unsatisfied (13.7%) compared to the number who are strongly satisfied (6%). An unsatisfying sex life has a strong negative correlation with overall relationship satisfaction, and a strong positive correlation to agreeing with statements like ”My partner doesn't excite me” (r=0.47), ”My relationship causes me grief or sorrow” (r=0.44), ”In hindsight, getting into this relationship was a bad idea” (r=0.42), and ”My partner judges me” (r=0.31). It also often leads to cheating. By the time relationships are 22 years old, over 40% of men self-report cheating at least once, while over 20% of women report the same.
So for men, opting for marriage seems like an exceedingly bad option because they not only have to pass the 50/50 on whether the marriage collapses into a divorce, but then they also need to hope their relationship remains net-satisfying in the long run when only around 40% do. Modern relationships age like milk and doing the math on the two probabilities (0.5 * 0.4 = 0.2) means marriage only has about a 20% chance of being satisfying in the long-term. To be fair, relationships in history also had to deal with one or both sides becoming unsatisfied, but the lust-focus of modern marriages make them particularly susceptible to problems compared to the more contractual marriages of history.
From a lot of random errant 'Me as a single late-twenty something talking to married forty-something coworkers' conversations, I feel like the longterm married/coupled POV can be dissatisfied with their sex lives on account of rather misunderstanding the current moment in singledom.
I've had way too many chats with schlubby 45 year old middle-managers who seem to be convinced that Tinder is a cornucopia of casual sex for everyman and/or that they'd be able to be a 'chad'. Admittedly I've also seen the same play out more than a few times with younger longterm committed friends who've tried opening relationships and/or breaking up with their SOs to sample the market and found themselves deep in the shit.
100%. I honestly think this is one of reasons it's valuable to have some non-monogamous options on the table in a long-term relationship - it helps combat the 'grass is greener' phenomenon if you're occasionally allowed to leave your house and check out the neighbourhood. And generally speaking, these days the neighbourhood is a burning valley of cinder and radioactive ash. Maybe you find an intact tin of beans or something but you're mostly relieved to rush back into your cosy warm home.
I don't even think that's necessarily a good idea.
The vast majority of male-initiated open relationships I seen have turned into absolute clusterfucks when the guy realizes how gigantic the gulf is between his & her access to casual sexual partners.
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That sounds like horrible advice, and an extremely cruel thing to do to someone who loves you / you claim to love.
Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that one did it without one's partner's knowledge and consent. And of course it won't work for all relationship dynamics. But I think more couples in general could benefit from having (explicit) loose rules around occasional dalliances outside the relationship.
Well, I actually think knowledge and "consent" is likely to be worse than straight up cheating.
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I imagine it can work if both parties are honest about it and the understanding is "you just wander off now and again to fuck someone" so long as there are no feelings attached. If it's a regular affair, that could really be a problem. And if you fall in love with new fling and want to divorce - yeah, that's the Jeff Bezos story.
But it does seem to work for some couples - see Alan and Jane Clark. He was a notorious philanderer, she stood by him (mainly by characterising the other women as floozies and sluts, too low-class to be any real threat to her):
I can imagine it working in a political marriage, or of some other kind of convenience, but how many people here are likely to end up in one? For everyone else, I unironically believe this is one of the cases where it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. If nothing else, don't mindfuck people into "agreeing" to something that's going to hurt them.
Absolutely that. It only ends badly for everyone, because the resentful partner will not tolerate such behaviour for long, and the partner who thinks they'll be swimming in pussy (or male attention, works both ways) may find they've broken up a functioning relationship and still get nothing in return.
As for "forgiveness not permission", I think if you can have flings and keep it secret from your partner and they never, ever, find out about any of them, then it works. But if you have a fling or flings and your partner finds out, they'll be hurt. Even if they forgive you, it'll probably be conditional on "and this never happens again" and if you're having flings because you're unhappy with your sex life, it's more likely than not going to happen again.
So if you promise "never again", continue to have flings, and get caught out the second time, it's all ruined. You're a liar and a cheater, they're leaving you!
And if you're honest about "our sex life is so boring I need this", that's another level of hurt and anger and may wreck the relationship anyway.
I know this isn't what people who are into polyamory are gunning for, but this is exactly why I think it's the better option. Let your significant other have some moral clarity, instead of wrecking their brain with "I agreed to this".
For some people it does seem to work, but that seems to be a subset of "we're weird in various ways anyway". The kind of people who couldn't have a conventional, and successful, relationship. I honestly don't understand what the difference is between "solo poly" and "sleeping around", but hey, I'm not in those circles.
For other people, the default is monogamy and that's why cheating is seen as so destructive. And even if you get your partner to agree (and I see some stories of people who nagged a partner into trying poly or an open relationship or the likes), it may not work out well; one or both of you may be unhappy, one of you may be getting all the new dates and the other gets jealous, one of you falls in love and breaks up the relationship and so on.
It's tough. I think a lot of people go into relationships genuinely intending to be faithful and committed, then after a while when everything is just normal and commonplace routine, they get a wandering eye and want something new and different. I think a lot of affairs happen because people are just stupid (that's being human, we're all stupid at times) and then it gets found out and there is Drama.
If you honestly can't keep it in your (gender-neutral) pants, then be honest with your partner (unless you are so super-organised you can juggle all the balls and never ever get caught out, but honesty is still morally better).
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This already happens in some places. In certain places, the overwhelming majority of sex worker clients are married. And a high enough % of men do use sex workers.
There might be utility in it being implicit/explicit or taboo/accepted but this arrangement does seem to be at least somewhat of a stable equilibrium.
It's not infinitely stable, but neither is long-term monogamy if this survey is worth anything at all.
My black pilled theory is that no stable equilibrium exists in terms of mutual sexual fulfillment, it's a privilege if you find yourself in one. https://www.themotte.org/post/411/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/76905?context=8#context
Plenty of things are already happening, and are stable equilibriums, but somehow I don't see people sugggest that it's important to, say, go out and mug someone every once in a while.
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I don't think even a fully-fledged non monogamous option is required for that. A bit of flirting with nonpartners here or there might just satiate the urge, after all a lot of the thrill is in the chase and flirting is enjoyable in and of itself even without it culminating in sex.
It does seem like playing with fire though. The people who actually have options will also be the ones who can afford to turn the side option into a main option, and you end up in a worse hellscape than the current one purely pushed by people on the margins making use of the new state of things and those not capable building a defense mechanism for it. Which is why I (hypothetically) think anything more than flirting should still be tabooed.
I'd go further: just don't spend too much time around your woman. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. One of the most awful things about growing up is gradually but inescapably discovering that my parents have an intense sexual relationship, even in their retirements, despite being nerds and squares. The best explanation I have is that they don't spend a lot of time around each other (they have lots of other friends and far more hobbies than they can pursue in a 365-day year) and so there's a spark of excitement when they actually spend time alone. They also had 3 kids and now have grandchildren they like to babysit, which also presumably limited their opportunities to spend time alone.
(And I hope that's the last time I have to think so much about my parents screwing in this thread.)
Companionate love blossoms with spending time together, but for keeping things alive in bed, I would guess that spending plenty of time apart is a good thing. The greatest danger for monogamous sex is the loss of a sense of it being special. For all their squarishness, bordering on puritanism, my parents always tried to impose on me the sense that sex is very, very special, and that the reason why not being promiscuous is important is not that sex isn't important, but that it's one of the most important things that humans can do.
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