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Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

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Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#451

Post by [deleted] »

goodpoint wrote: post #235
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…

> evolutionarily optimal strategy Gender roles (and sexism) are primarily cultural. If you look through history there has been matriarchal and patriarchal societies. Monogamous and polygamous and so on in many combinations. Humans sexuality is very unique compared to other animals and, respectfully, we should try not to play armchair Darwin. There are very good lectures from prof. Sapolsky on youtube on the topic. Hu…

[deleted]

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#452

Post by rngname22 »

todfox wrote: post #278

Sexual loneliness and frustration is strange to me. I accept that it is real and painful for many people. But I just don't understand how the desire for sex drives people to take risks with their health and safety, or how the lack of it causes despair or violence. What is the big deal about sex anyway? Why do some guys go crazy if they can't have sexual intimacy? A lot of time and effort for what, ten minutes of plea…

Replace all the references to sex with food/hunger in your statements - "What is the big deal about food anyway? Why do some guys go crazy if they can't eat? A lot of time and effort for what, ten minutes of deliciousness?" I think perhaps it will make sense?

The reason libido is referred to as a 'biological drive' (definition: "an innate motivational state produced by depletion or deprivation of a needed substance (e.g., water, oxygen) in order to impel behavior that will restore physiological equilibrium.) is that it's a biological "need". Quotes because while you obviously don't need it to survive, the brain feels the same way for some people that it does when you "need" food.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#454

Post by kragen »

dheera wrote: post #350
kragen wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, cuddle parties!

I don't think I would enjoy a cuddle party, though. For me having an emotional connection with someone (e.g. long term friends who have gone through struggles together, or people I haven't known for long but we've done something out of compassion for each other) is a prerequisite for touch to be desirable. I'm averse to being touched by a bunch of strangers and people I don't know well, especially in a group setting…

Given favorable circumstances, it might be possible for you to form enough intimacy with someone during a single party to enjoy cuddling with them. Or it might not; people are very different.

(I think a lot of people take MDMA in order to be able to enjoy being touched by a bunch of strangers if they normally wouldn't, and it seems to be effective, but I haven't tried it myself, and although the risks are relatively low, they're far from insignificant.)

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#455

Post by foldr »

godelski wrote: post #413
formerly_proven wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bunch more and coincidentally most of them are also leading countries for human trafficking.

I'm looking at Europe and I'm a bit confused how this would be a causal relationship. 9 countries have legalized prostitution: Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, and Turkey.[0] Human trafficking, in order of severity, is most linked to: Netherlands, UK, Romania, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Hungry, Portugal. From this list alone (these tend to follow power laws) there's…

It’s more than 9. It’s also legal in the blue-colored countries confusingly labeled with ‘Abolitionism’. It in fact appears to be legal in most of the countries on your human trafficking list.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#456

Post by matheusmoreira »

kragen wrote: post #416
yodsanklai wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would predict that being able to afford a nice apartment in a good area close to date locations will easily 10x your sex chances. This matches my experience. But overall, location is extremely important. I used to date quite a lot, and depending on the place, I could find dates extremely easily, or it could be virtually impossible. But one thing I understood after I turned 40. The number one criteria is age! It g…

What is your gender? I'm 46 and male, and more and more women (my preferred gender!) seem to be attracted to me over time, though surely at some point that trend will go into reverse. I've heard a lot of women around my age suffering from the opposite trend.

I have the same experience. The older I get, the easier it seems.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#457

Post by sidewndr46 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #264
treeman79 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monogamy was a fantastic tool to manage diseases for thousands of years. Imagine removing antibiotics, vaccines, screening tools, and any other medical treatment. Anyone who was around for the AIDs epidemic will understand how quickly a large segment of the population can start dying off. The early portion, it was literally a mystery disease that was killing off anyone that engaged in risky lifestyle.

As far as I know, there weren't any significantly life-threatening sexual diseases for most of human history in most of the world. Syphilis only affected the Americas before the 1500s, and HIV is much newer than that. Most other sexually-transmitted diseases that existed in most of the world were unpleasant, but not life threatening, even before antibiotics. And it's also worth noting that most primates (and many mam…

Syphillis isn't from the Americas or anywhere specifically. It just gets described in European literature around the time of Columbus first documented contact. If you read descriptions of literature from that time it's either a separate virus or the virus mutated radically since then to become less fatal.

As far as primates not having STIs, you might want to read up on the animal origins of HIV a bit. The only reason we have HIV is because SIV can proliferate indefinitely in another species and crossed into humans.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#458

Post by apeace »

Manuel_D wrote: post #439
apeace wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That blog post is -- and this is putting it charitably -- so horribly misguided and confused I hardly know where to begin. I'll just say: > being a disagreeable or even abusive partner is positively correlated with sexual success Citation needed. That blog post does not provide anything resembling evidence of your claim. For your sake, I hope you're not basing your views on sites like that.

> That blog post is -- and this is putting it charitably -- so horribly misguided and confused I hardly know where to begin. The post is horribly misguided and confused. Yet despite being so horrible you can't bother to explain what's bad about it? It always amuses me something is evidently so horrible as to warrant this language, but apparently not quite horrible enough to actually explain why. Ultimately, i'm not r…

Don't you think the "Am I The Asshole" subreddit is going to have a bit of a selection bias towards describing men who are assholes?

You seem to be using AITA as evidence that some huge percentage of women want to date/marry asshole/abusive men. It does not provide evidence of that.

You and the article you linked are suggesting a correlation between being an abusive/asshole man and having a large number of women want to have sex with you. But there is no such correlation. It's false.

I just want you and anyone else who ever comes across this part of the thread to not believe in such garbage.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#459

Post by koonsolo »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #115
itsmemattchung wrote: post #4

> 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…

> While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them When it comes to dating apps, everyone I know falls into one of two categories: The first group invests time into generating a good profile. They put the effort into getting get photos of themselves and presenting the photos properly. They write a good bio, avoiding the tired tropes ("love f…

I can't upvote this enough. HN is known to be very negative towards Tinder.

My first marriage ended with my wife divorcing me. We have 3 kids. On my Tinder profile I made it very clear I'm a dad. I'm not tall and not that handsome.

I'm a developer, so I don't meet that many single women in real life. Tinder was excellent. I met my current wife on Tinder, and still happily married years after our first Tinder date.

My wife is a relationship coach, and has great success with women. But the men are just uncoachable. They are not able to find a relationship, and still know better when an actual women tries to tell them what women want. Crazy.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#460

Post by jandrewrogers »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #318
cuuupid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair this is not entirely due to social dynamics but rather due to MatchGroup companies following identical monetization patterns. They’re just capitalizing on male desperation and artificially widening or narrowing the gap depending on how much you pay. If you observe the actual dating climate it’s nowhere near this bad and in larger cities like NYC it can even be closer to 1:1. Rather than a social problem th…

Can't speak for NYC but this is not true for the west coast tech hubs (SF, Seattle, Portland). In these places, even 300K per year tech wealth isn't enough to make one attractive to the opposite sex. I've talked about it on other threads but where and how you earn your money matters. 300K per year as a lawyer = sexy and powerful. Even "don draper" vibes. 300K as a SWE? The moment you mention this at a bar the girl kn…

Having a lot of money is correlated with personality traits that are attractive, because those traits facilitate accumulating money. You are conflating correlation and causation. Lucking into money because you happen to work in tech is not evidence of quality dating material ipso facto.

It is not hard to get a date on the west coast on $300k as a tech person, as long as you have more to offer than just that.

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