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Notes -
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.
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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