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Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

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Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#251

Post by wpietri »

waltbosz wrote: post #83
wpietri wrote: post #25

I am a regular reader of Reddit's "Am I the Asshole" and the sheer number of terrible boyfriends/husbands is jaw-dropping. And that's probably always been true, but what has changed is the extent to which women now have agency through having decent jobs and not being social pariahs if they're not married and pregnant by 22. The stuff my grandmother put up with just doesn't fly today. So if the content of AITA is any…

> training the bottom quartile of men in the basics .... I always thought schools should teach children "how to date". I went through sex-ed in Delaware public schools in the mid 1990s, and it was all the clinical physical aspects of sex, and the dangers of HIV. There was nothing about intimacy or consent. I did have a separate class in 7th grade called Conflict Resolution. It felt like a low effort attempt to teach…

Absolutely!

Well into adulthood I came across a book, "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men". It is the single most astute thing I have ever read. It's written by somebody who was a therapist for men in court-ordered programs. He spent years listening to their BS and at some point had enough and broke it all down.

I truly believe that if everybody spent 2 weeks on the topic at circa 16 years old, the world could be radically different. It wouldn't take that much longer to educate them on other relationships basics. Just the kind of minimum stuff and basic techniques that you see from, say, the Gottman Institute.

But I expect that will never happen because there are quite a lot of powerful people who benefit from and/or positively enjoy power differentials and exploitable ignorance. Harvey Weinstein comes to mind here.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#252

Post by amelius »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #108

This is hilarious. They found that young men are having less sex, young women are not having less sex, and some young men are having way more sex. And they conclude the problem is "loneliness". No, dude, the problem is young men are increasingly not worth having sex with. This of course has precedence in the natural world. Not every male is always having sex. Most often, a smaller number of males that are considered…

It's also because men who are in a relationship are way more attractive to women than men who aren't or haven't been, regardless of other factors.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#253

Post by yibg »

netjiro wrote: post #157
yibg wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if that's true. From most data I've seen women's preferences skew towards a small percentage of men. i.e. most women want the same guys, which are the small minority. This leaves (making up numbers) 80% of women wanting 20% of men. Where as men tend to be less discriminating in their choices of women.

I wonder about the actual numbers here, and how they vary between cultures, regions, age groups, etc. From what I see from my single female friends 20% is waaay too high. Not trying to be a jerk here, just observation.

Yea perhaps. It may very well be top 10% or 5%. But point is, it's a small minority.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#254

Post by goodpoint »

gorilla0 wrote: post #206
wyager wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with many sexually dimorphic behaviors in humans (and mammals in general), this flows from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variability_hypothesis You can have a stable/growing population with only 1 male per n>1 females. So, the evolutionarily optimal strategy is to crank up trait variance in males and have females select only the top 1/n males (hand-wavily speaking). Most modern human cultures suppressed this dynam…

Came here to say something similar. Humans are much closer to “other” animals than what they think, and social instituions like marriage were created to prevent social mayhem.

> Humans are much closer to “other” animals than what they think

Plain false. Humans are very unique compared to other animals as I wrote in another response. See prof. Sapolsky's lectures on the topic. He's an outstanding anthropologist.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#255

Post by frenchy »

frognumber wrote: post #24

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…

> but roles eliminate a lot of room for conflict.

I think that's only true if those roles line up with practical realities. The bulk of the problem with the 'old' roles is that become obsolete due to technological and cultural changes. The two biggest changes were household electricity, which enabled the mechanization of most houeshold chores; and refrigeration/modern fertilizer production, which made household gardens impractical for many people.

> As a cultural norm, divorce would only happen for fault ... Both sides would try to be good spouses.

+1. I grew up amoung pretty conservative Americans, and while they had some pretty toxic views around sex, the attitudes around cultivating healthy relationships has been one one of the most important things in giving me a happy life.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#256

Post by yibg »

afavour wrote: post #174
yibg wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if that's true. From most data I've seen women's preferences skew towards a small percentage of men. i.e. most women want the same guys, which are the small minority. This leaves (making up numbers) 80% of women wanting 20% of men. Where as men tend to be less discriminating in their choices of women.

Surely that would mean 60% of women (assuming equal gender balance in the population) are perpetually single? That doesn’t sound right to me.

It just means that 1 man in that top 20% (or whatever the actual number is) is dating / bedding 4 women.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#257

Post by javier_e06 »

The fear of social media retribution is real. People becoming intimate comes at the risk of being stigmatized within social networks. Adding to it the distorted key-hole, anxiety-driven on-line experience and well, becoming a Monk starts sounding more and more appealing.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#258

Post by owlglass »

wolongong942 wrote: post #145
wpietri wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that like she's getting the good end of the deal. But everything I've heard from women on those apps, they'd rather have the "handful of sincere responses" experience than the "bazillion goofs spamming them and sending dick pics at the first hello".

Those women would rationalize all of those goofy behaviors as being OK if the guy had the good genetics.

If you're talking about the Halo Effect, both men and women are susceptible to it. Interestingly, this effect might be "negated by feelings of jealousy in women" [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect#Gender_differences

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#260

Post by frognumber »

ckozlowski wrote: post #180
frognumber wrote: post #24

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…

I'm not going to downvote this. (I'm paying partictular attention to the "how I want to live my life" part) But there's a number of presumptions made that I think are worth calling out that should not be assumed: - That the ending of a relationship is necessarily a failure. - That two very young people are in a place to understand the implications of choosing a life partner. - That extended families are necessary to…

I am very well aware of those assumptions.

I've lived in several countries. I've found that things function better, and people seem healthier, in more collectivist societies where there are real, permanent families and communities.

To the point of the book, the way things actually were is that we evolved as tribal creatures. We didn't pick our communities, didn't have much choice of mate, and we did need to rely on our tribes and families. My belief is that's the way we're wired. We're social creatures. That's not the US in the fifties, but rather a statement on the nature of humanity for tens of thousands of years.

Now, we're wealthy enough each of us can be 100% independent. I don't see that as a pathway to happiness, though. The connections I see between people in the US seem so shallow compared to those I've seen in other cultures.

Yes, that does mean I need to repress a lot of "self" to fit in, and bury many issues, but I'm okay with that. The US has a loneliness and a mental health pandemic. The whole place is so incredibly isolating.

And yes, ending a relationship is a failure *for me*. I'm not saying it needs to be for other people. However, I want someone to grow together and to grow old with. I want more people around me too, whom I know well.

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