Live data from Hacker News

Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

researchgate.net

641–650 of 806 posts

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#641
post #344
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…

I've lived in big cities like that and I can tell you its still pretty much the same thing. Even though I hate this word but I had been what some consider a pick up artist before I got married, although a quite successful one. My n-count is in the higher double digits and I've dated a a "Miss" beauty pageant winner from an eastern european country that competed in the Miss Universe. There's endless science that suppo…

> So dating apps are a waste of time, much better to go out and talk to girls in real life and get yourself out of the synthetic environment apps like Tinder create.

Given your self-description, you're probably not understanding the problem from the men side. The problem is - how, specifically, to go out and talk to girls in real life.

As Elon Musk says, let this sink in. We're talking here about modern times, where people have less opportunity to contact each other - and the problem existed way before, now it only became harder. The main chunk of the problem is that it's unclear how to arrange for a lot - enough - opportunities to talk to girls in real life so that the results would be sufficient.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to the list the once more common community places, like church which pretty much disappearing from modern life (at least in the US and Europe). I'm not religious but more and more I think that church as a community place back then had a postive effect on local communites.

Classes at the community college probably more useful these days.

Tried to get back to university as a means to socialize more, in my 30s. It didn't work as intended, because attending classes while holding a day job left very little time for actual socialization with my colleagues. Ended giving up. I think it would have worked better with more free time to invest on it.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#643

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…

I also find the data highly questionable--it's very popular to pretend that prostitution is "trafficking" with little or zero evidence. I recall a news article recently about a bunch of "trafficking" busts--that was the police putting up ads and busting the guys who showed up. Trafficking women requires that there be women in the first place and there were none.

And, no, women who move around a lot and live on-site isn't proof of trafficking--because that's also a way to make it much harder for the cops to investigate and thus a sensible safety strategy for them. I'm sure trafficking exists but I don't believe the claimed numbers at all.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've observed it as well, and the truth is that attractiveness is just highly individual The OkCupid data confirmed this is false. Top 20% of men receive the vast majority of female attention. The inverse of that is that the majority of women think that 80% of men are mostly unattractive or at least unattractive to them. This is about as far as you can get from just trying to sweep the stats aside with a "highly in…

Sorry but people quoting the OKCupid study always ignore the part of the study that isn't convenient to their narrative. The data shows men might rate women's attractiveness charitably, but they only messaged the most attractive 5s. But whom women messaged tells a different story. Women messaged more average-looking men and were less likely to message the most attractive men.

These findings are replicated across many dating sites, not just okcupid. Here's the stats for Hinge: https://qz.com/1051462/these-statistics-show-why-its-so-hard...

Examining messages is largely moot, because by the time two people have matched we've already filtered out a huge portion of potential partners.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've observed it as well, and the truth is that attractiveness is just highly individual The OkCupid data confirmed this is false. Top 20% of men receive the vast majority of female attention. The inverse of that is that the majority of women think that 80% of men are mostly unattractive or at least unattractive to them. This is about as far as you can get from just trying to sweep the stats aside with a "highly in…

Sorry but people quoting the OKCupid study always ignore the part of the study that isn't convenient to their narrative. The data shows men might rate women's attractiveness charitably, but they only messaged the most attractive 5s. But whom women messaged tells a different story. Women messaged more average-looking men and were less likely to message the most attractive men.

The even bigger takeaway from OKCupid's stats, IMO, was the fact that divisive profiles performed better than generally okay ones. People were more likely to actually engage with a match they found attractive, but other people didn't.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#646
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think prostitution can fix that issue in the slightest. Here in Germany prostitution is legal and highly regulated (to the point that there are ticket stations for prostitutes working on the street to pay taxes). I would however never ever consider using those services.

> I would however never ever consider using those services. Maybe because you don't need or want to? If you're the type of person that wants to have sex with someone, and you're willing to pay for it, and you have the option - you're probably going to. If not, you're either expecting too much for too little compensation or regulation is preventing the market from being efficient.

Someone who wants sex in the context of a relationship might very well have no interest in a prostitute. The thought of sex with a stranger is repulsive to me.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#647
post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think most guys (or even most women, perhaps) have ever paid the least bit of attention to being interesting and exciting to their prospective partners, much less empowering them? I know for sure that a lot of men, significant percent of my single friends, actually tried that for years, with little to no effect. Seems like when a woman needs the man to be interesting and exciting, she wants some non-trivial…

> Or the society as a whole just doesn't know some rather simple to make and simple to understand actions? Yes, society as a whole does not care in the least about giving people viable social "scripts" by which they might get to know each other and pursue intimacy in safe, healthy and effective ways. (Of course, the consequences of this lack become all the more apparent when ludicrous excuses are put forth to minimiz…

> Yes, society as a whole does not care in the least about giving people viable social "scripts" by which they might get to know each other and pursue intimacy in safe, healthy and effective ways.

The question effectively was, do you know a smart thing the majority of the rest of people doesn't know - and that is for a problem which is older than all of us here. Seems like you believe you do but can't explain :( .

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#648
post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you present this as some sort of negative? I'm glad that you formulated this as a question. The answer is no, I presented it value neutral, both by intent and expressed written form. Now that GGP has a search term, he might soon find out more about the concept and also might admit it into his mind as real and true, as I once did.

Mentioned in another post but I think I misinterpreted your statement. Based on the search term, this appears to be a concept held by the incel community. Are you positioning it as true and if so, as a solvable problem or just a fact of life?

People are attracted to attributes that cannot be changed even with effort. Face, height, skin color? There is no "solving" that.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been married 24 years and I'm happy my marriage isn't transactional. What happened if you couldn't provide your bit due to an injury? Your marriage ends?

I have family in healthcare so I hear the stories. Serious unfixable medical injuries almost always end with the spouse at the very least getting sex on the side, at least if they're reasonably young. Getting a long term badly limiting disability in anything but old age is a recipe for divorce. Eventually the loving spouse gets caretaker fatigue and is overloaded from carrying the weight without relief. I fully expec…

My wife (in her mid thirties) sustained a nerve injury, couldn't move her leg, lost all mobility, was mostly in bed everyday and needed help standing, a special toilet seat, the whole nine yards. We were told this is a permanent condition.

I never left her side or stopped supporting her. I didn't get fatigued, I got motivated and we found one of the best Neurologists in the world. It took a several years and surgeries for her to get better. She can walk, drive, and work today. I couldn't imagine throwing away my marriage over some ass. Also what kind of father would I be if I left their mother when she needed me the most?

If your entire marriage is built on sex and money transactions, your marriage will eventually fall apart no matter what.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#650
post #624
post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many women struggle with how the set of men that are willing to have sex with them is a much larger set than that of men who are willing to commit to them. The size of the set intersection thereof declines precipitously as women age too.

It's kinda curious that women emphasize commitability as a desirable trait, yet they agree and understand that commits could and should be a rare thing. What about that majority of cases when a woman doesn't want a commit? People grow to sexual age in 18 and can be not committed until much later, so in between they can/should/want to have less consequential encounters, right? So what about that majority of cases, do…

> People grow to sexual age in 18

Sorry for going off on a tangent, but I think this needs correction. By that age, puberty is already over. For girls, onset of puberty is 10, reproductive maturity is 14.

It could be that you mean something else, namely a related social/legal construct, but that does not seem likely to me because of the word "grow".

Post reply on HN