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Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

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Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#631

Post by mancerayder »

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.

Seconded. Part of it is projecting confidence and communication skills. I knew in the back of my mind this was true, but it took me well over a decade (arguably two) to actually learn. Part of it is how you talk to people, part of it is how well you can pick up on body language, hints, subtle social contexts.

This is very very very important to women. It's a big red flag when a guy is as they might put it, "clueless." Meanwhile it's a frustrating experience not understanding what's going on for the guy.

Dating aside, an empathetic listener who reads body language will usually be someone more engaging and engaged to interact with.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#632

Post by f154hfds »

agentwiggles wrote: post #558
benj111 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So church is a place you can go to hook up and have sex? They seem to be underselling that feature.

I'm going to answer assuming you're not being deliberately obtuse: Yes. Obviously it's not a bar where you're looking for a one night stand or a casual hookup. But churches as a general rule encourage their congregations to get together in a myriad of social settings. So yeah, if you were looking to meet a person who shared similar beliefs and values to you, joining a church would be a pretty decent way to get freque…

Thought I'd just say that I met my wife through my church. The above is absolutely the truth, though churches vary enormously in demographics. Get connected to a young church with a 'singles' group and you will meet lots of prospective spouses.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#633

Post by LorenPechtel »

aatd86 wrote: post #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.

A lack of sex and a lack of romantic relationships both have substantial negative correlations with health.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#634

Post by phkahler »

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…

I've been told by a few women in person that I'm really good to talk to. I disagree and think I'm average at conversation. Apparently most guys actually suck at it, at least with women.

I responded to one profile by noting the lake in the background of one of her pics and asking where it was. She about fell off her chair and said I might be the only guy on there who actually reads profiles.

Up your f'ing game guys, it doesn't take much apparently.

I got out of my shell by having dinner at the bar and talking to strangers of both genders. Now I'm a known regular and sometime people buy me a shot. This took years, so get started today.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#635

Post by LorenPechtel »

fxtentacle wrote: post #74
snowpid wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"lots of countries" To my knowledge only Germany.

Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Greece, Turkey, Senegal, Nevada in the US, and various Australian states

*Parts of* Nevada--it's county choice in the rural areas (my impression is about half say yes), prohibited at the state level in the urban areas.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#636

Post by [deleted] »

willcipriano wrote: post #112
notch656c wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those 10% dudes are smart enough not to settle for a 90% woman for more than a few dates when they can pull a new one off the app at a moments notice. In the end they are the only winners in this situation.

[deleted]

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#637

Post by bmn__ »

red_trumpet wrote: post #286
Levitz wrote: post #182

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. 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?

Women are okay with sharing one desirable man (polygyny). It has been that way since humans exist, as evidenced by the different rate of reproductive success for men and women respectively, as recorded in our genome. This is stable from a biological and social standpoint, if the social environment is how we spent the last couple of hundreds of thousands of years: in clans and tribes, size below Dunbar's number. If you look closely, polygyny is making its comeback since the end of enforced monogamy.

For modern society, this return to acting out the ancestral environment makes everything unstable. I predict in my lifetime for depression and suicide to be overtaken in number by extreme bouts of violence and riots.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#638

Post by voviz »

phkahler wrote: post #634
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…

I've been told by a few women in person that I'm really good to talk to. I disagree and think I'm average at conversation. Apparently most guys actually suck at it, at least with women. I responded to one profile by noting the lake in the background of one of her pics and asking where it was. She about fell off her chair and said I might be the only guy on there who actually reads profiles. Up your f'ing game guys, i…

What kind of bars do you go to? I don't know much about bars, but I assume some bars are meant for that kind of stuff and others aren't.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#639

Post by kragen »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #501
kragen wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A weird thing about this is that I think I've had more sex, and met more new partners, in periods when I was unemployed or underemployed. When I've been really poor I've been depressed, which cuts my chances of meeting a new partner to about zero. But when I've been extremely employed I think I haven't had the time or emotional bandwidth for intimate relationships. Or travel: travelers get an automatic +4 bonus to se…

> So I think worrying about whether your apartment is nice enough might be analogous to worrying about whether your penis is big enough I think the point of an "expensive" place (really just a big one that isn't disgusting) is that you can host people, throw parties, etc. Being able to host is a massive boost to people being willing to go out of their way to spend time of you, and (good) hosts get a +4 bonus to sexin…

Yeah, throwing parties and hosting people is pretty great as a way to meet people. My current apartment is an efficiency, so it's not well suited to hosting people unless we're already comfortable being naked around each other. This doesn't totally exclude meeting a new intimate partner that way (my friends from the dance world are generally totally comfortable being naked around each other, and most of them have never been my lovers) but it does diminish the opportunity a lot.

But you don't really need a big place to host someone from CouchSurfing or WarmShowers or Hospitality Club or whatever the current one is. Just having two bedrooms with doors that close is enough. Or one bedroom, if you yourself sleep in the living room in pajamas, or something.

Here in Buenos Aires the apartments are mostly small, so the usual way for people here to throw parties is to either rent an event space for the night, propose an event to a cultural center, or just arrange to all meet up in a bar.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#640

Post by OkayPhysicist »

ryeights wrote: post #150
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Unfortunately this response is divorced from reality. I have observed many 20-something women swiping through Tinder and the #1 cause for a man’s profile to be rejected is his attractiveness simply being average or below average. Have you ever tried online dating on platforms such as Tinder?

You're greatly underestimating the effect of good photos. As a bi guy, I've seen my share of both men's and women's dating profiles. The general trend: most profiles are terrible. Of the decent ones, women tend to have good photos, but shitty/non-existent bios, and the men tend to have good bios but bad photos. Only a small fraction of people combine both to make really compelling profiles.

So for men, the biggest improvement they can make is take more photos of yourself in hope for some good ones and maybe get some professional photos taken. What constitutes a good photo? In descending order of importance: 1) they want to be flattering. You'd think this would be obvious, but far too many profiles have photos that actively highlight negative features of their subject. If your hairline is failing, have photos with hats on. If you've got a beer belly, don't have side-facing photos. Etc. 2) They should suggest that you do fun things, and are thus likely to bring a potential date to such fun things. Nature shot, beach shot, interesting place shot. If you have some interesting hobby, maybe an action shot of you woodcutting/flying a model plane/intricately painting plastic figures. 3) Since this is a forum for tech workers, you probably have more discretionary income than average. *Subtly* demonstrate that.

Ultimately, what it boils down to is that everyone knows your profile pictures are going to be your absolute best photos of yourself, carefully crafted to make you look your best, overselling reality substantially. If you put bad pictures in your profile, people will STILL ASSUME THAT, and thus assume you look even worse.

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