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Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

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Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#281
post #232
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't bars similar to dating sites? A forum for men to compete with other men for women. I would think they'd have better luck with group activities (rec sports, craft/hobby stuff) or online groups devoted to something (restaurant enthusiasts, etc).

Nightclubs, yeah, most bars aren't nightclubs though. Bars are a fairly decent place for low stakes socialization, at the very least. In person dynamics are just different - I met my husband in a bar. At the time neither of us were looking to date anyone for various reasons but we happened to get chatting and our chemistry was immediately apparent. If he were exactly the same person but I first "met" him as a dating…

In regular bars it's downright rude to walk up to most groups if you're not in that group, and good luck finding a single woman drinking by herself.

In night clubs? Better hope you've hit the gym for the last month...

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#282
I don't understand why having mastery over one's own conditioning is not put forward.

Sex is not necessary for health. That's weird. This is just an ingrained behavior to ensure reproduction via neurotransmitter feedback (dopamine).

One should be able to trivially control that consciously, no big deal.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#283
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah everyone seems to be very focused on sex whereas to me the problem is not fostering intimate connections in the first place. We don’t have an epidemic of relationships that aren’t having sex, we’re having an epidemic of people who aren’t fostering those relationships and as a downstream byproduct they aren’t having sex. Pay a prostitute is a bandaid patch on the downstream problem, but it will never makeup for t…

I'm single and male, and personally I don't feel a "need" for sex. I do wish other less intrusive forms of intimacy e.g. hugs could be more legitimized between single people, though. Sometimes I see pictures of cats cuddling and just wonder why humans are so bad at engaging in simple, consensual comforts like that.

There are professional cuddlers that you can hire for, non-sexual, cuddles.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The only advice I've told them is to get out of any online stuff and hit bars. They need your wife to bring her single friends to the bar. If they have a hard time reaching out to women hitting bars without friends won't help them much.

[deleted]

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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, a…

At minimum I think most people (the bottom ~90% dating-success-wise, both men and women) in our society would be better off with arranged marriages compared to our current cultural hellscape. The problem is no one thinks they're in the bottom 90% of anything.

Yeah, mindset is a huge component to this. I think the media has exasperated the problem through idealized fantasy which does not match reality. I think people tend to have high expectations of a match, but don't hold themselves to the same standards.

As an example, I've had fat/obese friends say they wouldn't date a fat girl... Or friends that expect the man to pay for everything like it's 1950 and make grand gestures like in the movies.. what do they expect then?

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#286
post #182
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to me. I have female friends in their 30s who go on tons of dates but reject pretty much all of them for any long-term relationship. The ones they seem to be in to tend to reject them after a couple of dates. I'm not there in those interactions but I wonder how much of it is a mismatch between what you desire in a relationship and who you are attracted to in a person.

>It's interesting to me. I have female friends in their 30s who go on tons of dates but reject pretty much all of them for any long-term relationship. The ones they seem to be in to tend to reject them after a couple of dates. This is simply the other side of the coin, "online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers" What is happening is that in the same way most women get more attention than most men,…

I don't understand how this is a stable situation. If women have to compete so much, wouldn't it be better for them to lower expectations?

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#287
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me. So, I promise I'm not just picking on the phrasing (though yeah, the phrasing is pretty bad). I find it amazing that you went through that whole discussion about the perspective of your seemingly-hetero-male-only social environment without once recognizing that intimacy is a two-way transaction and that the other party needs to get something in return. Everyo…

I agree with this. The importance of being okay-looking and intellectually stimulating are small compared to the importance of being a good emotional communicator, self aware, reciprocating in conversation etc.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#288

I am a handsome gay man and I can open up Grindr to pick todays solution to my sexual loneliness at any time. Sometimes I do, because my hormones and lust dictate my actions. Just invite someone over during home office and fornicate while I carefully listen to Slack sounds in the background. Generally all it lead to so far was the whole ABC of STDs and even more loneliness. Sex is incredibly overrated and I probably…

The problem is, the ones valuing it most are the ones getting it the least. My guess is that if they do end up getting it a lot, they might end up with the same conclusion as you.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#289

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.

100% this. How many acts of violence by lonely men would be avoided if they had just had the opportunity to go out, drop $150 and have sex. Especially sex that catered to whatever fetish they happened to indulge in. I have no scientific numbers to back this but I am willing to be the answer is "a lot". I feel like if an isolated, angry virgin was able to have sex in a non judgmental environment they would lose their…

And I don't see how there's anything to back up this assumption. It seems to me more likely that men expressing misogyny online would also express it in person. Sex workers may individually choose to tolerate that or may not, but either way this opportunity exists now and this problem still persists.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#290
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm ok looking and I feel like I can make women like me. So, I promise I'm not just picking on the phrasing (though yeah, the phrasing is pretty bad). I find it amazing that you went through that whole discussion about the perspective of your seemingly-hetero-male-only social environment without once recognizing that intimacy is a two-way transaction and that the other party needs to get something in return. Everyo…

Sounds quite misguided.

Of course intimacy is a two-way transaction. It's also a thing where the chain of events and actions happen, and there are many possible breaking points, which at beast move the interaction to square one. So to summarize in short words, "make women like me" means passing this chain of events - from men's point of view - so that there's a passable chance to actually complete the transaction. Note that the situation is hardly symmetrical for men vs. women - I'd argue men are much more forgiving and willing to continue the chain of actions should something go sufficiently unexpected, in the wrong enough way.

I would guess you don't see the attempt to square the perspectives because it could be too obvious to talk about. Like, when we talk about programming we usually assume ability to handle basic addition of numbers under a hundred, which comes handy - and similarly when we talk about relationships we assume the two-wayness just the same, there's no need to talk about it.

> Sales people don't try to close a deal without getting to know the customer first.

This could vary widely. One can study somebody else for long time - see e.g. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070735/ The Sting, where the conspirators take time to study the ways their counterparts behave. Or in other case one could fly by the seat of your pants on a dance floor, when he sees a woman partner for some minutes at best. There could be little opportunities to get to know the other side better though - Tinder illustrates that when you make a split-second decision having barely even studied the image on the screen, not saying anything about the person themselves.

> Why do you think it should work any different here?

I guess because the analogy doesn't quite holds.

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