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Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

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Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#651

Post by leidenfrost »

GregLan wrote: post #616
thw09j9m wrote: post #124

I'll chime in as somebody who's been considered top 10% of attractiveness in one country and bottom 50% in another - the difference in the amount of sexual opportunities on apps is absolutely staggering. Not that this should be a surprise to anyone. Where I am considered attractive, I've gotten 80+ matches in one day and random women messaging me at 11PM telling me they're lonely and to come hang out. I've had more f…

If you are a white person who goes to a developing nation you'll be top 10% while in your country you may be in the bottom 20%

I know a guy who tried to do that, but his desperation traveled alongside him.

Here in Buenos Aires if there's something valued as much as looks, is spontaneity. So much, that we have the same words for "going on a date" and "hanging out". Because "a date" sounds like you are looking forwards to it and that's a turn off. You have to read the vibe to see if it's really a date or not.

So, as soon as he got some attention, he scared them away.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#652

Post by notch656c »

bastardoperator wrote: post #649
notch656c wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 surgerie…

Lol it's hilarious you pretended to ask a genuine question when you already knew the answer for your marriage. In fact you intentionally withheld it as some kind of poorly executed trap. Talk about a bad faith discussion.

Not all marriages involve people with the money to continue supporting the children when both rather than just one parent is bankrupted by medical debt, and not all disabilities end with being able to drive and walk. Usually don't involve people privileged enough to get "best in the world" Neurologists either.

There are people out there that may have to divorce precisely because they can't look their kids in the eyes with the marriage as it stands due to the disability, knowing a divorce will separate the finances and possible allow them to find more support for their child. Every human is susceptible to caretaker fatigue and you yourself can't possibly know you would never get fatigued if the disability never ended. Some people can go a 1 year without cracking, others a decade, others 100 years and until it happens you probably won't know your breaking point.

The fact of the matter is I get to see the people that deal with hundreds of seriously chronically disabled people. My dataset to work with is that it's a bad bet to expect that the counterparty will sacrifice themselves indefinitely for the sake of the marriage.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#653

Post by avmich »

koonsolo wrote: post #459
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…

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…

> But the men are just uncoachable.

Pretty grand generalization. Sometimes it feels like a coach advices you impossible, mutually contradictory or equivalent of jumping off a cliff. I guess it could be hard to find a matching coach.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#654

Post by LorenPechtel »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #457
tsimionescu wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It looks like the European strain wasn't as deadly as the American strain. Pre-Columbus skeletons showing signs have been found.

However, with a slow disease like syphilis there's also the issue of how well it was identified in old times. Identifying the primary form as sexual is very different than identifying the tertiary form as a continuation of the primary. It was 1965 before we realized shingles is tertiary chicken pox and the 1980s before they realized that cervical cancer is mostly tertiary HPV. Other virus/cancer links have been identified (I recently read that IIRC 5% of cancer is known to be of viral origin) and personally I think the actual number is even higher as determining a link between an asymptomatic virus and later cancer would be very hard. (Again and again I see news reports of clusters of unusual cancer where no cause is found but the pattern looks contagious. It's very hard for cancer itself to be contagious but the same effect would be observed if the cancer was due to an asymptomatic virus. I also find the notion that random mutations could cause consistent behavior of the cancer strange--but quite sensible if it's viral damage.)

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#655

Post by astrange »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #509
giantg2 wrote: post #135

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…

I would strongly discourage fishing in international waters. The basic problem is that there is a huge incentive for such women to pretend interest when what they really want is the green card. The balance of what each brings to the table shifts considerably once the permanent green card is issued. Note that this is *not* to say that international relationships can't work--I've seen some that do (including my own) bu…

Go for other first world countries then.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#656

Post by ryandrake »

nkingsy wrote: post #241
spaniard89277 wrote: post #38

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…

In a past life I got pretty deep into trying to help guys like this. There's a whole industry around it peddling advice that ranges from effective (yet impossible to implement for a broken person) to counter-productive and evil. It's really very simple, but people just have massive amounts of negative programming that radiates out from them like a reverse pheromone. Those who are hungry do not eat. You can't fake it,…

I'm glad I'm married and (hopefully forever) out of the game, because I can imagine it's even more difficult these days where harassment and creepiness is much more prominently on the radar. It can be a minefield. The difference between flirting (wanted attention) and creeping (unwanted attention) is entirely in the mind of the recipient. So you don't really know which one you've done until the recipient reacts either positively or negatively.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#657

Post by tsimionescu »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #457
tsimionescu wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As far as I understand, the exact history of syphilis is still unknown, and the idea that it was spread to Europe from the Americas is not completely impossible (though seems less likely today).

As for SIV, I am aware of it, but it is not a serious problem for most simians (though apparently Chimpanzees are being killed by SAIDS in serious numbers) - which is my point. STIs have not been so serious a threat to animals as HIV+AIDS has been to humans in the initial pandemic.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#658

Post by astrange »

notch656c wrote: post #32
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…

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.

That's Tinder. I'm told Bumble and Hinge actually work for people.

Of course, what really helps is to be on the favorable end of the gender mismatch if you're somewhere like SF or NYC. It's not nearly as bad as online people say it is though. You only need to find one person!

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#659

Post by pwthornton »

low_tech_punk wrote: post #62
bastardoperator wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who think like this don't tend to stay married long.

Perel's argument was the inverse: people who failed their marriage because they are holding too tight on the monogamy ideal, as they expect everything from a single partner who cannot provide everything. Well, I'm not sure what to think of that. I'm just quoting her theory and I feel it's relevant in this discourse.

You shouldn't be getting all of your needs met by a sexual partner. Friends and family are critical. A lot of the people I know into polyamory do not have the best friendship and family situations. They are seeking to get everything met through partners.

Re: Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem?

#660

Post by astrange »

yibg wrote: post #49
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…

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.

What women "want" (who they start conversations with) on dating apps isn't super relevant; that just means you have to message them first.

IIRC the OKCupid data showed that women rated most men poorly, but then still responded to their messages, so, like, it didn't matter.

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