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Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

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131–140 of 806 posts

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#131
I'm married and older so I'm not trying to speak with any dating authority here, but my advice would be to get involved. Volunteer in your community. Join a recreational group. Get to know your neighbors. Basically, expand your social network and do it face-to-face.

I'm not saying to ditch dating apps. Rather, supplement by getting out and getting to know the people around you.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#132

Legalize prostitution and regulate safety and perhaps incels would build confidence and learn to socialize a bit from paid sexual interactions? I'm kind of ignorant to the subject of what is the cause of 'sexual loneliness' but I believe the world's oldest profession shouldn't be pushed into the shadows as that causes more problems than it prevents.

Women have already chosen the safest way to be sex workers: Through media like OnlyFans. All relations with men, but especially prostitution, are vastly more dangerous for women.

The fact that women have chosen this way of interacting with men on a paid basis should tell you it's not because they are prudes about sex work. They don't feel safe, and for very good reasons.

This is yet another example of how men need to stop "solving" this problem with their own clever ideas. Stop and listen. You will hear answers.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#133

Legalize prostitution and regulate safety and perhaps incels would build confidence and learn to socialize a bit from paid sexual interactions? I'm kind of ignorant to the subject of what is the cause of 'sexual loneliness' but I believe the world's oldest profession shouldn't be pushed into the shadows as that causes more problems than it prevents.

I think that would work on the immediate effects (i.e. "sexual loneliness") but build confidence and learn to socialize? I doubt that. Sex is the endgame. Before that you've got a whole world of social interaction and skill and skipping to the end wouldn't help you with any of that.

Maybe if the prostitutes were more like escorts, you go out on a date, they give you honest feedback about how you're presenting yourself and so on. But that feels far outside the typical work of a prostitute.

EDIT: now I think of it I doubt it would work on sexual loneliness either. I can't imagine that loneliness is solved simply by the act of sex, there's feeling wanted, feeling desired, all those things. I have no experience (I swear, officer!) but I can't imagine getting those things out of something I know is a financial transaction for my partner.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#134
I've noticed that a lot of college aged women dated (at least briefly) men 10+ years older, in some cases more than once. Inevitably they got figuratively screwed by the man who can't get women his age to date him, and eventually go back to dating people their own age.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#135

> One possible aid for sexual loneliness might come from online dating apps such as Tinder. In theory, online dating could provide an efficient way to find a partner. However, online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers – perhaps even more so than traditional dating. While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them My wife d…

I've been running online communities for years and this, as far as I can see, factual. I've read somewhere, maybe multiple times, that most men are emotionally and sexually deprived. That sounds correct given the data I have. I'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me. I still struggle sometimes. Many of my friends do much worse than me. I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-look…

"I have friends that I find intellectually stimulating, average-looking, that have not been touched by a woman in years."

I have a friends like this. One solution a couple of them have found is dating internationally. Not via "mail-order" services though. It was sort of a situation where they had a domestic friend who had friends or relatives abroad who were looking for a US marriage. So there was some trust there, and it was set up sort of like an arranged marriage. A lot of people hate on arraigned marriages, but the older I get, the more they make sense.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#136

Legalize prostitution and regulate safety and perhaps incels would build confidence and learn to socialize a bit from paid sexual interactions? I'm kind of ignorant to the subject of what is the cause of 'sexual loneliness' but I believe the world's oldest profession shouldn't be pushed into the shadows as that causes more problems than it prevents.

You suggestion kind of sounds like: Let's teach kids how to grow an apple tree by giving them apple juice. Consuming the benefits of having a woman sexually interested in you is a very different skill from creating that interest in the first place. So they would just pay to skip all the steps that they are bad at, thereby never learning them.

> You suggestion kind of sounds like: Let's teach kids how to grow an apple tree by giving them apple juice.

This is a poor analogy because apples and apple juice don't involve social dynamics. I can easily see a man who is experienced having sex with women through prostitution being more confident flirting/being intimate with real-life women. And confidence is a large part of "creating that interest."

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#137
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singling out dating apps, or worse a single company thinking their monopoly created the problem, is missing the forest for the trees. The social dynamic exists independent of dating apps which monetize and exploit it. The dynamic is the same in real life, for example at a nightclub where women drink for free, promoters who bring them get paid per girl, and lonely men pay $40 cover for a chance to shoot their shot

If dynamic in real life is 1:2 then it’s 1:1000 on dating apps. Also I would actually blame MatchGroup here, they’ve been fighting dating apps with better models for years, every company they swallow has adopted the same bad ethics (case and point Hinge), and the only company that’s managed to stay afloat away from them (Bumble) is suing them. They are most definitely a major component of the problem

What happened to Hinge?

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#138
post #45
post #9

[flagged]

> Lol religious conservatives. This is the solvable part. They don't run the country; they're a minority. > Encourage men to have sex with men? Religion is a fig leaf here. The dislike of LGBTQ+ people is retroactively justified by religion, but it just isn't about religion. If it really was about religion, there'd be a lot more weird hills they'd be dying on, since most of the Anti-Gay stuff is in the Old Testament,…

> This is the solvable part. They don't run the country; they're a minority.

Yes and no. They've got a 6:3 majority in the Supreme court for the foreseeable future, and thanks to gerrymandering, their distribution in rural parts gives them a significantly outsized impact on US politics. I would agree that this minority shouldn't run the country, but it isn't the case. And I'm not sure how that's "solvable" either.

> Religion is a fig leaf here.

Oh, I agree. My favorite is Leviticus 15:32-36... working on the sabbath no longer incurs the death penalty. But, religion is full of contradictions: compare the Prosperity Gospel with the actual teachings of Jesus. Laws and rulings targeting abortions and LGBT rights are couched in terms of "religious freedom." We cannot hold proclaimed religious people accountable for the contradictions we see between their books and their proclaimed faith -- their proclaimed faith is the protected part!

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#139

> One possible aid for sexual loneliness might come from online dating apps such as Tinder. In theory, online dating could provide an efficient way to find a partner. However, online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers – perhaps even more so than traditional dating. While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them My wife d…

Tinder is straight up depressing for the median dude. My mind was blown just how much harder it was to get a date on tinder vs getting a date in real life. I can do the latter pretty easily but trying to get one on tinder would be like months of constant effort to then get ditched before the date even starts. It feels like 90% of women on there are chasing the top 10% of dudes and not settling for anything else.

[deleted]

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#140

I am happy about the study, since I think this is underresearched. However, I think Gini Index this is a horrible way to look at it. Regular sex is important, but regularly switching sex partners isn't really how I want to live my life. I don't want 50 lifetime partners, 38, 15, or even 12. I wanted one. That I have more than one is a sign of failure of a relationship each time, which is not a success. If I had my ch…

Right, and each of these automatically get red-flagged by women, which takes out of the dating pool, people who subscribe to them. Advocating for them is the social/relationship equivalent of rent-seeking behavior: rather than compete, change the competitive landscape.
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