I’ve been busy and going easy on you recently, so today I’m giving you some real meat to chew on. Sorry if it reads like a class assignment – but this is the most important kind of academic research we talk about. Once we have scientific, indisputable proof that women are getting screwed by casual sex, the dialogue changes. That is very, very important, because that in turn has the power to change the culture.
We’ve got a great group of regular commenters here, but they constitute a very small percentage of readers. I encourage you to join the discussion and say your piece! Just click on the post-it to the right of the post title, or go to the comment box at the end of the post. All views are welcome.
Steven Rhoads, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, has an article in the current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education: The Emotional Costs of Hooking Up. (Hat tip: Teresa) While it doesn’t contain new information per se, it’s a good summary of much of the research that has been done around casual sex. It’s also another article that dares to question the effects of the Sexual Revolution, and drives another nail into the coffin of Gender as a Social Construct.
Those who are threatened by any notion of restricting female sexuality, either voluntarily or involuntarily, often scoff at the notion that hooking up causes depression or constitutes a bad deal for women. This has amounted to willful ignorance, as the research that has come out within the last ten years has shown clear cause for concern.
Rhoads begins by highlighting the change in attitudes toward premarital sex in the last half century. Not surprisingly, the larger shift has been among women:
| 1943 | 1999 | |
| Women | 12 | 73 |
| Men | 40 | 79 |
He notes however, that romance has all but disappeared from the equation, and he sees the effects in his role as a professor:
For the past 12 years, I have taught a course on sex differences to college juniors and seniors. When we talk about relationships and sex itself, most of the men, sometimes sheepishly, indicate that they enjoy hookups—but the vast majority of the women are unhappy with them. Time and again, women see their girlfriends’ post-hookup traumas, even if they themselves manage to avoid such outcomes. If the men call again, it’s often just for another hookup. But as soon as the women push for a real relationship, the men break it off.
Women don’t want sex for long without an emotional connection, a sense of caring, if not real commitment, from their partners. As one student wrote in a paper for my class:
We are told not to be sexual prudes, but to enjoy casual sex, we have to be emotional prudes.
Not every woman “gives it up” to men who offer nothing more than a proposition, but those who don’t accede often spend Saturday nights alone. At most American colleges today, more than 50 percent of the undergraduates are women, and they feel pressured to compete sexually for men. The result is a lot of angry women. As one told my class:
I live with 16 other girls in a big house, and whether we give men what they want or we don’t, we all agree that men suck.
Rhoads’ wife teaches Shakespeare at an all-male college. In a discussion about love, one student declared that he was too young for it:
I haven’t slept with enough women yet.
Another guy said:
Sleeping with a woman who has already submitted is like playing a computer game you have already won.
Rhoads continues:
These differences in motivation lead to a lot of pain for young women. Seventy-one percent of teenage girls report being in love with their last sexual partner but only 45 percent of boys do. And teen girls are far less likely than boys to report being happy with their sexual experiences and far more likely to report that they wished they had waited longer to have sex.
The picture doesn’t get prettier for more mature singles. According to the research of Syracuse University anthropologist John Townsend, the most sexually experienced single women, while still believing that casual sex is fine, find that their feelings will not cooperate. They feel used, hurt and demeaned after sleeping with men uninterested in relationships. Many of the most sexually active men, on the other hand, regularly engage in pleasurable sex with women they barely know and sometimes don’t even like.
Townsend’s studies also indicate that men are predisposed to value casual sex, whereas women cannot easily separate sexual relations from the need for emotional attachment and economic security:
Indeed, wherever men possess sexual alternatives to marriage, and women possess economic alternatives, divorce rates will be high.
However, Townsend’s research indicates that some men prefer an emotional bond. Twelve percent want an emotional involvement before having sex, and 25% get attached after several sexual incidents whether they planned to or not.
Rhoads also cites the work of Herold and Mewhinney, which showed that:
- Women derive less enjoyment and experience more guilt from casual sex.
- 63% of males and 28% of females positively anticipate casual sex.
- 25% of males report enjoying it, while only 2% of females do.
Catherine Grello did a 2005 study of college students and found that:
- 52% of the males and 36% of the females were having casual sex. All of them knew that the sex was casual.
- Of those, 18% of the women expected the sex to evolve into a romantic relationship, while only 3% of the men did.
- Casual sex is highly correlated with alcohol and drug use, so it was not surprising that nearly all casual partners had met in bars or at parties.
- 20% of the men having casual sex were in a committed relationship with someone else at the time.
- A majority of the men having casual sex had a Ludic (game playing) approach to relationships, while a smaller number and most of the women had an Eros (passionate) orientation.
The really interesting thing about Grello’s research though, is the correlation she found between depression and casual sex in women. She found that women having the most casual sex report the most symptoms of depression, and that those women have more partners and more regrets than other women. For men, the opposite is true – the men having the most casual sex were the least depressed. The research did not prove a causal relationship, but posed questions for further study.
Are women having casual sex is search of external validation?
Or are they caught in a vicious cycle of engaging in doomed relationships?
Or is the depression a manifestation of the cognitive dissonance a woman experiences when engaging in an activity she disapproves of?
Denise Hallfors also did a study in 2005 which looked at the role of substance abuse and casual sex in predicting depression, or vice versa.
She found that casual sex does predict depression in women, but depression does not predict sex.
From the Rhoads article:
In their book forthcoming early next year from Oxford University Press, Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think About Marrying, Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker report that having more sexual partners is associated with “poorer emotional states in women, but not in men.” The more partners women have in the course of their lives, the more likely they are to be depressed, to cry almost every day, and to report relatively low satisfaction with their lives.
Following the piece, there were a few comments that I thought raised interesting questions:
1. I do believe that women have to harden their hearts to have casual sex – it becomes an attitude of “I’ll use you before you use me.” But isn’t that what the sexual revolution is all about? The ability to make your own choices and live with the consequences?
Do you think that women are capable of hardening their hearts in this way? Do you agree that women follow this strategy of being the f*cker instead of the f*cked?
Do you agree that casual sex as experienced today fulfills the goals of the Sexual Revolution?
2. So how do we differentiate “evolutionary psychology” — from side effects like “emotional sickness” that come from people’s unconscious adherences to patriarchal ideology? Where the genome project hasn’t yet ventured, how do we differentiate what is “natural” from the stubborn byproducts of prolonged cultural inequalities?
Is it possible that depression in women, and women’s preference for emotional intimacy during sex, reflects a patriarchal culture, and longstanding inequality of the sexes?
Is the sexual double standard a social construct or a biological reality?
3. ”My female students tell me that the emotional pain caused by casual sex goes largely unreported by women, because they are often ashamed that they care about men WHO TREAT THEM LIKE STRANGERS the next morning.”
Does anyone see anything pathological in a male who can have sex with someone and then treat her like a stranger? A stranger? It seems to me the problem with hook-ups not about the number of partners or about the enjoyment of sex. It’s about the pathological ability of the males involved in hook-ups to shut off basic human empathy completely.A guy who might have an empathic reaction to a buddy in pain can completely turn off an empathic reaction to a girl he has sex with. Sociopaths lack empathy, which is how they can hurt others indiscriminately without any sense of wrongdoing. The behavior of males in hooking up seems exactly sociopathic.
Do you agree that casual sex promotes sociopathic behavior?
Are women engaging in this same lack of empathy?
What is a reasonable expectation for the morning after?
Rhoads concludes:
Feelings don’t change with the times in quite the same way that behaviors and attitudes do. If the evolutionists are right, those feelings are rooted in women’s evolutionary history and will not disappear anytime soon.
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I thought it was interesting that at least one study divided casual sex into two categories: strangers/acquaintances and friends. In addition, as you and Snowdrop say, there’s the sex that comes when you’re dating. The problem is, if one person hopes for more, by definition it’s not casual. So it often winds up being casual for one party and not the other. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” norm for the first weeks of dating is really problematic for women, because they don’t know if the sex they’re having is casual or not. The only answer is defining it before you have it, which means waiting long enough to feel comfortable defining it.
For one thing he could take them camping and fishing instead of Xbox, and be the fun dad even if he keeps saying “No I’m not buying an Xbox. Let’s go play baseball.”
I find real resistance from men on this question. They’re so wedded to the 80/20 concept. The real truth of the female college population is that a significant percentage graduate college virgins, well under half engage in casual sex regularly, and about a third have one partner during their college years. Yes, the frat stars have a string of girls in rotation, but it’s not the whole campus!
Yeah, she has that effect on people, being the fairy godmother of the neocons and all. What I liked about The Fountainhead was:
1. Howard Roark – wish there were more men like him
2. Ellsworth Toohey – the best characterization of the emperor having no clothes I’ve ever seen.
I agree.
Jeez, that story sent a chill up my spine. The fact that you saw it first hand and that it’s not propaganda on some MRA site tells the true story.
Also, there is absolutely no doubt that your generation views commitment through the lens of their own experiences. Vincent, who made the statement Meg objected to, has shared that his mother treated his father terribly in a divorce. How could a young man NOT be affected by that?
Oh I so agree with you R.B. An abusive guy is going to be abusive no matter what. Here’s what happened to me (I’ll try to be brief) I was raised in an extremely strict sect. I was a virgin till I was 32. I left that sect and was in graduate school with so-called “normal” guys I thought. I decided it was high time I was “normal” and had had a decent number of dates with this guy and was prepared with birth control. Because I was prepared with birth control, the guy, who I didn’t think was religious, went nuts and immediately turned into a jealous maniac. He had been raised Catholic and had that virgin/whore thing in the back of his mind. Sorry, it’s not only Catholics who have that. Some Catholics do, and some other guys do too. He became jealous and abusive, accusing me of looking at other guys when I absolutely was not. Before long he was demanding to listen to my answering machine and getting upset if a classmate (female even) called for the homework assignment. My conclusion: if a guy has a screw loose around this stuff, even being a virgin isn’t good enough for them.
Yes, I do hear these stories sometimes. You are one strong woman, Aldonza, and I can imagine a man becoming putty in your hands, lol. That guy probably had more oxytocin flooding his brain than you did!
Are either of them bipolar? This is one way that condition can manifest.
I find this very reasonable. It stands to reason that men don’t want to be cuckolded, and this is sort of a reverse cuckolding. Denying me while you’re giving it away to everyone else makes me a fool. From everything I’ve read, it seems that men need and want to know they are special – valued and appreciated. They want to be “your man” not part of some stable of ponies.
Randian philosophy is more paleocon than a neocon. I don’t think Ayn Rand would support “compassionate conservatism” or “pre-emptive strikes.”
I would argue that everything you’ve said here applies to women as well.
Oh, that’s hilarious. A guy being used for his intimacy! How many rom coms have guys had to sit through, only to learn that it’s going no further than spooning?
100 percent agreed.
Really? I didn’t know that. I’m not aware that either of them are, but I’m sure there are probably plenty of undiagnosed people walking around, if there symptoms are not too bad.
I think, if I may venture a guess, because many women’s hearts are still getting hurt by casual sex.
Things will be equal when women really truly stop getting emotionally hurt and/or the emotionally steeling themselves that they are trying to do now, actually works.
The gist of the article seemed to be that steeling themselves isn’t really working.
As much cheerleading as Jezebel did back in the day, and as much as shaming is against the rules there, they do post quite a bit individually “Casual sex isn’t for me…I can’t handle it emotionally.”
How about the one that says that only women can be primary caregivers of children? That is clearly rooted in biology. Or that women are not suited to certain professions. Or even that they can be educated at all, as some cultures have believed.
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A lot of cultural habits have been ascribed to “biology”. I don’t deny a lot of evo-psych makes sense, but humans are pesky animals when it comes to purely instinctive behavior, what with higher brain functions and all.
True. But I think you’d find that William Kristol et al are big fans. She’s probably spinning in her grave.
You fail to respond to the key issue here. It’s not the activity that the father chooses to engage in. It;s the fact that the wife is sapping his money when she is already sapping his money. His once great life is now left with him shuffling towards death with a constant burdening on his back. His existence is SHIT because he got divorced. SHIT. And you can’t tell me I’m wrong for that. Snowdrop, I’ll tell you some more honest shit too. If I was this guy I would feel like shit going over to that wife’s house as well. No matter how much of a “fun dad” you want me to be, I go over for a family dinner or something and see paul living in my house, with my kids, with my wife, because of my money. I have fucking pride. A man has to feel like a man. And that man I saw did not feel like a man. I doubt he felt like much of anything. I mean I don’t want to think for him but if you could’ve seen his body language it was so disheartnening. So pitiful.
Tell me, seeing that, why should I want to get married? Why? Life is full of challenges and we all must overcome then but I need some safety nets sometime. I know I hate to study but if I work hard I’ll get good grades. I hate to go and work out but I know If I do I’ll have a healthly body. If I miss a day I can still get back on the horse and be ok. One mistake will not ruin the rest of my life with ym grades. You make a mistake and ruin your marriage and your life is fucking over. Done. Alimony, child support, the knowledge that visiting your kids is going to the house that houses the man who fucks your wife on your marital bed. OMG just thinking about makes me shit bricks man or woman, or who ever you are snowdrop. Only take fights you know you can win. I think marriage is a fight that is becoming increasingly difficult for men in the modern generation. You better not let a single blow or two hit you cause everything being thrown is a haymaker. And the taller we are the longer the fall till we’re napping on the mat.
Back to your questions Susan:
1) Regarding only the 40% of our male ancestors accessing women and reproducing:
” Citing recent DNA research, Dr. Baumeister explained that today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men. Maybe 80 percent of women reproduced, whereas only 40 percent of men did. http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-anything-good-about-men-and-other-tricky-questions/”
In former times civilization was much less democratic. Societies often had a upper ruling class that hoarded females and an underling class that provided menial work. Conquerors enjoyed reproductive privileges, the conquered died unfulfilled. That’s a very rough overview but imagine for a moment the natural screening process. The successful, risk taking, promiscuous males hoarded all the females. Unsuccessful, compliant, ***monogamous*** submissive males were bred out. Fascinating implications.
The female influence to selection is less clear but it is certain females are inclined to reward the successful male, likely stemming from the chances of her offspring succeeding to adulthood without an untimely end from falling into the “conquered” category.
2. Based on your obvious understanding of female hypergamy, I wonder why you state that women are not discriminating and put out for any old schmuck.
Actually I don’t think this is the case at all. Most females exercise discretion and a selection sense. When they DO NOT , i.e. acting the slut, they are typically punished for dereliction of duty. This punishment, BTW comes from females just as readily, if not more so than from males. In fact females feel much more threatened by the indiscriminate slut than a man does. A slut reduces the value of a high value female by offering a similar product at a much cheaper price. ( hate reducing it to those terms but you get what i mean)
3. Are you saying that you are a serial monogamist? And I’m wondering your age. If intimate relationships are temporary, aren’t you losing something by anticipating an end?…….And do you never find that women don’t feel exactly the same way you do when you decide to end it?
I believe humans are inherently serial monogamists based on research , statistics and my own observations. I don’t have time to supply the link to the research right now so I will paraphrase from memory. The brain chemistry of couple has been studied in depth. Relationships tend to progress along this path: Lust to love to like to friends to roommates. There is unmistakable chemical markers associated with each phase. Our physiology supplies powerful mutual chemical enhancers during the initial phases of a relationship. These are chemicals such as various pheromones, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin? and others. Chemically speaking our physiology stops rewarding our relationship after approximately 3-4 years. We stop/reduce emitting these and likewise our brains response to our partners chemicals are dulled. This is when partners often notice and emphasize flaws and begin taking each other for granted. The further down the road we go the more the arrangement becomes practical cohabitation, further and further removed from the passion that started it all. If we subscribe to evolutionary biology then many will note that the period from 0-2 years old is when a child (and mother) is most vulnerable and in need of a provider/protector. Add in the gestation period and we come up with ~3 years. After that we males appear to be optional.
Regarding you list of rewards for men in marriage, I agree with them. However, they are all dependent on the marriage working out. If the couple divorces these benefits not only flee but the ramifications create larger persistent negatives. So what we are really talking about is the risk versus the reward.
The risks of divorce for women are in many cases nill, at least from a familial and financial perspective. Going one step further, there are numerous incentives for a women to terminate the marriage. The thrill of a new lover, a new life, income, freedom versus the same old same old that grew stale after the first 5 years. Men are getting gutted in marriage/divorce. They never get the kids, they take a powerful financial hit, and they are often ostracized by the empowered ex wife who has dramatic influence on his children. This is not to start a finger pointing session. I am well aware of the dastardly deeds of men and the female exceptions to the above.
The point is, all this indicates relationships are temporary and marriage is a reward incommensurate with the risk involved – by a large margin.
I am not particularly happy about it. In fact it goes contrary to everything we are taught. But I do believe I personally found peace with it. The biggest challenge is the preconceptions of my partners.
Yes, but women fear betrayal through emotional intimacy more than physical intimacy, and for men the reverse is true. Obviously, both sexes dread betrayal of either variety, but for men the sexual fidelity is paramount.
Oh, I agree. A woman could definitely rack up some big numbers by doing the “3 date” rule just in college alone! That wasn’t my point. My point was, the definition of “casual sex” is pretty fluid. Most people assume it means a constant string of one-night stands. But actually, I don’t know any women who do that.
Who knows about the oxytocin, but he’s still a good friend. FWIW, this guy was alpha all around who dated lots of much younger, very attractive women. Tall, smart, good-looking, made great money…but I broke up with him because he was a little bit too old for me and I couldn’t see him fitting in my life with children. For his part, he loved having an attractive blond in the front-seat of his Mercedes who could also discuss the relative merits of a SAN vs NAS for network storage and was amused when I dared call him “ADD Boy” to his face.
I think that’s the “sweet spot” for women today. I don’t believe casual sex is really the enemy. Using sex to try to get relationships from men who just want sex is the problem. That’s why I made the point about one-night stands. A girl who goes to a club looking for sex and not expecting anything more is probably a lot better off emotionally than one who waits X number of dates with a guy she really likes and then is devastated when he forgets her name the next day. Strangely enough, we judge club girl a lot more harshly than we do relationship girl.
Have followed the blog and believe you are making a valiant effort to bridge the “gender divide” on sex. I was raised in a feminist household, but I really believe the whole narrative of feminism was erroneous. The idea that patriarchal marriage was an institution designed to oppress women gets it bass-ackwards. It is designed to guide men into investing in child-raising. In my travels throughout traditional societies, it appears that the “moral police” are the older women. The goal is to eradicate, to the greatest extent possible, single motherhood, as it presents a direct challenge to male parental investment. Older women in these societies are threatened by this prospect because most have had enough children to have one son. Because patrilocality is an essential aspect of most of these cultures, this gives the son’s mother, or the “mother-in-law,” enormous power and a role to play in the extended family. Single motherhood follows from a society that condones casual sex, and female sexual autonomy naturally leads to casual sex. Men love this system to a point, but it does not engender understanding between the sexes as the sexual psychology of men and women are vastly different. In contrast to the feminist narrative, marriage was meant to “oppress” men to a certain extent, though male parental investment is beneficial to society as a whole. The only solution is to cut out the root of the casual sex weed that has grown, namely female sexual autonomy. I doubt this is acceptable to women given the feminist narrative, thus our system is destined to continue its decline into dystopic proportions.
Haha, you sound like the sassy girl that flipped Escarondito into a relationship, even if that’s not what you were going for.
These are all studies that point to “benefits” (and given this is social science, I use that word loosely), while completely ignoring the risks.
Divorced men have more physical health problems, more severe financial problems, and a greatly elevated risk for suicide, depression and mental illness than married, single or divorced women or married or single men.
Men in bad marriages also have a heightened risk of mental and physical health problems.
Currently about 52% of marriages end in divorce or separation.
By ignoring the downside risk to men of bad marriages and divorce overall, you paint a false picture of “benefits” to men.
There’s no net information in those studies that captures the risk + benefit equation of marriage to men.
I could probably write a scientific paper about the benefits of motorcycle riding, but if I ignored the risk of paralysis, head trauma, spinal cord injury and death in my paper, I’d be painting an unrealistically positive picture of a behavior by utterly ignoring the downside.
That is exactly what is going on in the studies you cited above.
I’m not objecting to the fact that if you saw a bad outcome from marriage, that you would avoid it. I’m simply trying to point out the fact that women aren’t the only ones who treat people badly. Yes, in recent years things have swung in their favor, sometimes to the detriment of men’s wellbeing. But to just forget the years and years before when things went the opposite way, when there were no alternatives for women, leaves out a pretty important piece of the puzzle. People, even women, aren’t born to be cruel opportunists. I can see why watching a bad divorce would make a person think that, but to say you doubt whether some women are even capable of empathy towards men is really extreme and, dare I say it, playing the victim card.
And Escarondito, it is sad to see situations that started out with some kind of love end up that badly. But you’re assuming a lot here. That she doesn’t make more money than the husband, that he wasn’t at fault for the divorce, that she and her new boyfriend live in the ex’s house, that the kids aren’t spoiled brats because of him… You’re creating emotional details so that using a piece of anecdotal evidence carries more weight.
Hollenhund, you have a point. Women had to marry. I should have said that women didn’t stop participating in loving relationships with men because they knew what the possible bad outcomes were. And that may be biology, but it’s at least an argument against the notion that women have no empathy and are to blame for every terrible thing that has ever happened to a man ever.
I have a good friend who married a “nice guy”. They had equivalent careers, but she had to give hers up when their second child was special needs because he “couldn’t handle it”. She remained faithful and did the traditional housewife role better than most women I’ve seen. He shielded most of his business assets, manipulated his income low and left her for a younger woman. He sees his kids less than once a month, complains about the absurdly low child support order (which doesn’t even cover her childcare expenses since she had to go back to work), while he jets around with his girlfriend to Aruba and Hawaii.
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That man’s existence was probably shit before he got married, shit while married, and now shit while divorced. He could change his life by saying the word “No.” and meaning it.
Yes, this is it in a nutshell. I don’t believe that female sexual autonomy will ever disappear, but it may change its form, either through the influence of external factors, e.g. culture, disease, or self-policing on the part of women. That seems unlikely I know, in aggregate, but it could be a reasonable strategy for individual women, in my view, if they are sensible about the men they target. Holding out on cads is a losing proposition, lol.
P.S. Thanks so much for the kind words.
Since the sexual revolution, women with authority have been foisted on us and have proven that in most things, they should be subordinate to men.
If you want assholes, that’s fine.
I’ll bet every single one of those men is a beta. It’s impossible to be a good man and support a woman who doesn’t deserve it.
“How about the one that says that only women can be primary caregivers of children? ”
Custody awards in divorce have not changed in about 4 decades. This is not at all a double standard which has been discarded, in fact feminist groups continue to fight to aggressively maintain legal and financial barriers to allowing divorced or never married fathers to be primary caregivers of their children.
Convenient excuse? Try damn good reason. If we’ve seen that monogamous marriage leads to ruined lives, why wouldn’t we avoid it?
You don’t know those men, but I know you *want* them to be beta. One is a fairly traditional Italian male who owns his own successful construction company. Another is a tall, attractive, former Marine who is a police officer. The third is a litigation attorney. All of these men are very confident and have always had women chasing them. Beta? If so, I’ll take it.
I think the 80/20 concept is probably overstated, but even if it were accurate, it wouldn’t necessarily preclude the numbers in the survey. I think the 80/20 rule is really more a statement of raw attraction than it is about actual sex, since even in a hookup culture, women have an emotional filter that tempers this behavior. But even if it were a rule about the quantity of sex, you could still explain those numbers easily by pointing out that its not a rule about “casual sex” where both parties have that same expectation. It’s very likely that, in many instances, the guy viewed the sex as casual and the girl did not.
Also, as others have pointed out, the 52% number for the guys could be explained if the substantial majority of that 52% only got it on rare occasion.
The risks of divorce for women are in many cases nill, at least from a familial and financial perspective.
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Bullshit. I don’t know any woman who’s standard of living didn’t take a serious hit when she divorced. I’m aware that the original book that was oft-quoted about this has been debunked, but even more recent estimates have a woman’s standard of living dropping 27% and a man’s rising by 10%.
Man, sometimes these comment threads go somewhat astray from the original topic, but going from casual sex to the Iraq War has got to be a record.
I’m guessing this si snow but for some reason it says anonymous. True. Those details reflect what scares me about marriage. And that’s why i should probably marry some Beta female and live on easy street. Naw fuck that I’ll go for the challenege of taming the alpha chick.
Jimmy Hendricks said “In my eyes, there’s a difference between a girl’s sexual attractiveness, and her”relationship attractiveness,” if that makes sense. They’re completely independent of each other.”
That’s a great point, and I hope it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.
“I have never seen an alpha male married to a former slut. ”
These kind of statements are silly – you will simply define the guy as not alpha by virtue of his being in that situation, and then, walla, you are proven correct.
People do all sorts of things, and sometimes people are just compatible regardless of their past. You must be very young.
Also, given the mixed messages sent to women over the last 30 to 40 years, often women who were “sluts” were simply women with higher sex drives but found out that exercising that sex drive indiscrimately was not fulfilling (despite what all media was telling them). Conversely, many women who were very chaste were simply women who had very low sex drives and weren’t giving up anything by being chaste. They didn’t have sex because they simply didn’t get aroused. I can tell you from personal experience, you are FAR better off being married to a woman with a very high sex drive than one with a very low sex drive. You just have to be sure going in that the former is really into having sex with YOU.
Sorry, that was me. I don’t know what happened there.
“I’d love for someone to explain how the expectation of a sexually-attractive women holding out sex from *all* men but the chosen “one” . . .”
I don’t think that’s what he said. I think he said that he could tolerate her holding out from him for a while so long as she hadn’t been taking the opposite approach with other (i.e., more “alpha”) guys (either concurrently or in prior situations). That’s not the same as him expecting to be the miraculous “one” that suddenly unlocked her vault unlike no other, that’s just him not wanting to be a total chump (and, consequently, be the guy she is settling for and likely to cheat on).
Yup, that’s exactly what I meant.
That may be true, but I think most guys find a good percentage of college aged girls to be hot. In my case, I’d probably put that number at about 60% when I was a student, but maybe I was just fortunate enough to attend a “hot” university.
For girls, on the other hand, it seems like only the top level of guys are seen as attractive. I keep seeing this 20% thrown out there, and that seems like a good marker.
One of them was a former exotic dancer who, and I quote her exactly, “tried men on like pants.” This was not a college oats sowing. She did date a rank beta once and she chewed him up alive. It was kind of pathetic. She definitely needs a strong hand from her partner in a relationship.
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And how would you be able to tell the “true sluts” from the “occasional pump and dumps in college”? Are they labeled in some helpful way?
Being sassy (but not crass) is probably as good of a definition of “girl game” as any. I’ve found I’m naturally that way with some men and find it very difficult to be that way with others. And, of course, the ones I’m that way with are much more attracted to me.
I know you want these men to be alpha, but unless they’re the exception to the rule, I doubt it. I have never seen an alpha male married to a former slut. A girl that got pumped and dumped once or twice in college is still okay, but a true slut, nope, never.
Exactly. It is an obvious truth most people prefer to ignore and deny. It also explains why many men believe that women don’t want causal sex as much as men do. Wrong! They are just choosier about who they want to have casual sex with. Small wonder it is usually beta males who buy into this pretty lie. “Women just don’t want casual sex that much”. They do – just not with you!
Even with all alimony and child support payments factored in?
Call me a patriarchal asshole if you want, but I agree with the idea that women are, on average, better at nurturing children than men, and for that reason they should be the primary caregivers of children. That doesn’t mean ONLY women can fill that role though. And this is rooted in biology.
And women, on average, certainly can’t fill certain professions as well as men, on average, can (mining, soldiering, firefighting etc.). This is also rooted in biology.
From Rand: http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB5018/index1.html
In addition, the evidence indicates that although marital status has an effect on mortality, the determining factors underlying this effect are not always clear. In the case of older divorced men, being outside of marriage leads to poorer health and also to shorter life. Other unmarried men, however, have higher mortality rates despite the fact that their general health levels are no worse than those of married men. Therefore, while the relatively good health of married men offers a partial explanation for their increased longevity, additional determining factors have yet to be found.
So the finding is clear, but the reasons are not.
From the Times link:
In terms of money, Waite’s research found that married couples were generally more financially well off than couples who simply lived together, because they were much more likely to pool money and invest in the future than were couples who merely cohabitated.
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Increased material well being, she argued, trickles down into investments in better medical care, safer surroundings, better food and other things that raise the standard of living and reduce stress.
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Throughout three days of paper presentations, at least a half dozen demographers of family structure made strong arguments against cohabitation, offering research showing that those who live together before marriage have higher divorce rates, are more likely to be incompatible and sexually disloyal and are generally less happy than married couples. People who live together without marriage focus too much on their individual careers to care about another very much, said onedemographer; others argued that such people are not necessarily committed to a relationship for the long haul.
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With 22% of wives now earning more than their husbands in the U.S, there is real financial benefit to husbands throughout socioeconomic strata. One breadwinner marriages are no longer the norm. Most marriages have two beasts of burden, with the women assuming a disproportionate share of housework and child care in addition. Both parties work very hard, and this is stressful, no question.
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Studies show that married men earn 22% more than their single colleagues, and are promoted more quickly (2005, U.S. Navy study).
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It’s true that the divorce rate is 40%, but as I said above, the divorce rate for college educated couples married ten years is only 17% – those are the consumption marriages, and there’s no question they are more likely to survive.
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I agree that the divorce laws in the U.S. are often financially ruinous for men, and I support overhaul of that legislation, though that is very unlikely. Obviously, marriage is beneficial only if it lasts, and divorce is harmful. I don’t dispute that.
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When I spoke of an increased sense of obligation to others leading to healthy behaviors, I was thinking of the following:
Care in times of illness
Better nutrition
Home environment with a partner reduces stress
Moderate consumption of alcohol
A Norwegian study showed that men who have never been married have a 16% higher mortality rates from assorted cancers.
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It’s true that American women are not forced to satisfy their husband’s sexual needs, but the largest study demonstrated that in all 38 countries surveyed married men have more sex than single men. So the numbers for the U.S. must factor in the unwilling wives. Of course, the George Clooneys of the world have no worries regardless of marital status.
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In short, marriage confers significant advantages when it works. It can be highly detrimental when it doesn’t. It seems to me that those willing to risk it must be extremely careful in their choice of a mate. Remember, I was responding to PJ, who implied that there are no benefits to marriage for men. That statement is proved false.
Let’s just hope you never get married, have children, then get divorced. Your kids will grow up without a father, which other folks think is just fine and “rooted in biology”, as well, whatever that means.
HA! Ok… so my tongue is obviously firmly in my cheek, but how about this? It really is due to the long dark winter, and whenever a Scandinavian woman comes to the U.S., all the bright sun brings out the slumbering sexual dynamo that was suffering from vitamin D deficiency.
Seriously, you bring up a good point. We’d have to find some way to control for the fact that Scandinavian countries do have a lot of depression. And it’s not speculation that the long dark winters are a causal agent. That’s as much medical fact as something could be. After all, men are equally more depressed, too. And it happens in Alaska, which is a very conservative and Christian state.
So, I guess your next task is to sponsor a year long vacation for a couple hundred Scandinavian single women in the Caribbean. I’ll be happy to accompany them to … ahem… observe and monitor their depression levels. Yeah. That’s what I’ll be doing.
Yeah.
PJay, the current divorce rate is 40%, having been steadily declining since 1980. For college educated couples in the U.S., it’s 17%. Since virtually my entire readership is in that group, I have a more positive view of the odds than you do. Please reference my reply to Hollenhund for more detail. The studies in question are not funded by pro-marriage organizations. Several do try to determine cause among various factors for men who are married, divorced and never-married, as well as men cohabitating. With the marriage rate declining rapidly in the U.S., it will take some time before all of the data is known.
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What is beneficial and healthy is a successful marriage. I do not dispute that failed marriages are disastrous, especially for men who are guilty of nothing more than having become “boring.” As for the percentage of divorces initiated by women (70%), even that is a complicated statistic. It ignores why people initiate divorce. The wife who gets cheated on or abused is more likely to initiate divorce than her husband, obviously. Also, studies show that divorce is primarily instigated by the party that has the least to lose financially. With that being men nearly always, in marriages where both parties are unhappy, the woman is more likely to want to dissolve the marriage, as there is often a smaller financial disincentive to her. If the laws were more equitable, we would undoubtedly see a shift in who initiates divorce. This is not an argument in favor of marriage, just trying to clarify that point.
When I say rooted in biology, I mean that we don’t really have much of a choice in the matter. That’s what we’ve learned in the last 40 years. No matter how good women feel about having sex with a variety of men, the truth is that men consistently state their preference for a mate less sexually experienced than themselves. Men are hard-wired to guard carefully against raising another man’s child – jealousy as an emotion is thought to have evolved from this need. And studies show that men experience jealousy more quickly and intensely than women do. In the year and a half that I’ve been blogging, I have never heard a single man say he doesn’t care whether a woman has had sex with many different men. In fact, many have cited a maximum number of previous partners that would take me right out of the running. That surprised me, but I don’t doubt that is a real and strong feeling for most men.
I think the double standard that women make better caregivers for children is very much alive and well. That is not to say that men cannot do it well, but very few men choose to do so. Walk into any preschool or elementary school in America for proof of that. In addition, I have never witnessed a family, with both parents working full-time, where the children did not gravitate naturally to the mother to have their immediate needs met. This would obviously be different in Mr. Mom situations, but I’ve only ever met one of those.
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Biology does indeed dictate that women are not suited to certain professions, in part because they aren’t interested, as in the example above. There’s also the real difference in physical strength. You don’t see women working in the mines, as was said on another thread, or getting blown up on oil rigs, for example.
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It’s true that many cultural norms are ascribed to biology, but that’s just error. Those are the double standards that will not stand the test of time, i.e. educating women. The ones that are rooted in biology may change over time, but we’ll all be long gone by then.
1) Wow, that is very interesting. I really didn’t know twice as many women had reproduced. It’s good to know that women aren’t drawn to those dominant men for no good reason
2) I agree that females don’t tolerate promiscuous females, historically. Today they do so much more readily, as the promiscuous women appear to have social status by virtue of their constant short-term validation from men. I recently wrote an article where I suggested that we need to bring back slut-shaming between women.
3) I understand the chemistry of relationships, and am aware of the phases. However, serial monogamy would mean a veritable free-for-all of passion. A dopamine carnival. This would not be conducive to successfully raising young or even having them, for that matter. Maybe what we’re designed for is to cool our jets and maintain a cooperative and prosperous society, rather than build our lives around the maximum number of orgasms.
As for the benefits of marriage, I agree that they only apply if the marriage is a successful one, and that the risks are high for men. The question, it seems to me is one of opportunity cost – when men forego marriage, they are not risking divorce, but they are risking health benefits. Clearly the happiness ladder will look something like this:
Happily married men====>Unmarried men====>unhappily married men====>divorced men.
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In any case, it’s good that you are comfortable with your own decision. I can imagine your partners would indeed have some reservations about it. Obviously, a woman who wants to marry and/or reproduce would be making a terrible mistake to sign up for your short-term leasing plan. However, that’s on her. Caveat Emptor.
Dan, I’m assuming you mean here that a promiscuous woman isn’t relationship material? Or that a man’s standards will be different for each? Obviously, character would be important for an LTR. I’ve never known a man to operate on anything other than sexual attractiveness for a short-term fling, and the more sexual experience the better.
Yes, I agree with all of this! One of the points I often labor to make is that raw attraction is tempered by an emotional filter in many women. This is anathema to guys running Game, but it need not be a hindrance. For guys who want to pump and dump, they know just where to find women who don’t filter out cads. For men who want to use Game to get a relationship, they can apply the principles in such a way that they make it throught that filter. It’s not black and white, as Athol Kay’s blog proves.
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I hadn’t thought about how the sexes consider sex differently, but that makes total sense, especially since often there is no conversation about “what it is we’re doing.” That talk is usually reserved for a point where the two have hooked up numerous times.
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And yes, the frequency is an unknown. For every question a study answers, it seems to raise ten more.
Hollenhund hit the nail on the head when he said: “I would say this: IF a man is looking for LTR he will put up with a high-value woman holding out IF he believes she is withholding sex from ALL men, EVEN the alphas, NOT just him.”
I agree 100%.
From http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm
* Number of marriages: 2,162,000
* Marriage rate: 7.1 per 1,000 total population
* Divorce rate: 3.5 per 1,000 population (44 reporting States and D.C.)
3.5/7.1 = 0.49 . This does not include separation incidence/prevalence.
For a real, data-supported analysis of divorce and it’s drivers (especially among women) see ‘These Boots are Made for Walking’: Why Most Divorce Filers are Women
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=713110
Most women initiate divorce because they know they will get the kids, house, child support, etc.. There is no data to support that women initiate divorce because of abuse by men. The proof of the former is the reality that divorce rates plummet in states when joint custody legislation is enacted, all other factors being equal.
Women do not have a “smaller financial disincentive” they have a larger financial incentive.
At least as of 2002, 7.8 million Americans paid about $40 billion in child and/or spousal support. 84% of the payers were male, so women received about $40 billion from men in that year. By law, child support is tax free to the recipient, with the taxes being paid on that money by the obligor, so in a very real sense, the true value of that support paid is likely in excess of $40 billion.
Certainly sounds different than a “small financial disincentive”!
OK PJay I don’t want to get into a pissing match here – we’re not going to agree on whether marriage is a good or bad thing. My marriage is a good thing. The 17% rate I cited applies specifically to college educated couples at the 10 year mark, as I said.
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I did try to read the paper you mentioned but it seems from a Google search (your link is just the abstract) that it’s not universally accepted. In any case, it makes no sense to speak of all women with a broad brush. Some women will stay for the long haul, with or without children, some will bail. Again, this varies a lot according to education level and socioeconomic factors.
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I agree that child support laws are discriminatory toward men. I would like to see a system where women are held accountable for spending the money on the children, for starters. I hope it’s true that some women, perhaps even the majority, do spend the money on their children, and not on themselves or their new boyfriends. But nothing would surprise me.
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Re the financial disincentive, I was referring to the fact that child support aside, divorce makes both parties poorer. Indeed, one of the reasons that marriage is considered beneficial for men is the pooling of resources improves quality of life. One house instead of two, for example.
I hope that folks don’t think it is just fine for a child to grow up without a father. That is certainly not rooted in biology, as women select based in part on whether a man is likely to stick around and co-parent.
Would you ask that question if they were men? Is it that hard to believe that, given the right incentives, some women simply do selfish or rash things?
Hollenhund, this is not my area of expertise, obviously but I’m curious. What is the current state of alimony? Why would anyone get it? And aren’t there some men who have been awarded alimony too? I think alimony should be grandfathered out if it hasn’t been already. Fine, if Jack Welch dumps his wife of 40 years, she should get alimony. But there’s no reason in the dissolution of a contemporary egalitarian marriage for either party to get alimony, as far as I can tell.
Haha true! I was also just wondering how I once again fell into the quicksand of the divorce laws….
How can you read this article and make this claim? Do you not understand that women are wired differently than men? We do not like sex without intimacy! We don’t get off, and it gives us a low self-esteem hangover. This is ESPECIALLY true with the cads. Ugh, just your use of the phrase “pretty lie” tells me where you spend your time. You’ll never square my blog with his.
Well, obviously, he wasn’t really nice. How did she not figure that out before agreeing to marry him?
Haha, glad to hear it. I have no doubt that you can try and succeed.
Alpha is what it is. Stop trying to force a beta into an alpha hole. I’m not saying that an alpha can’t get attached to a slut, just that he won’t commit to her. I find short term relationships with crazy sluts more fulfilling than with more chaste girls.
You’re assuming the marriage is monogamous. I get bored of having sex with the same girl very quickly so I actually prefer a girl with a lower sex drive so she won’t be as disappointed when I start having sex with her less often.
Oh, I know you could put a smile on 200 faces, assuming you had a couple of months.
Feminine girls who go through a slut stage are noticeably damaged by it. Masculine girls are not, but their masculine personalities make them unattractive for long-term relationships anyway. In my experience, strippers have very masculine personalities.
OK – truce.
Let me just say someone who’s been riding their motorcycle for 10 years may also have a 17% injury rate.
And that rate has absolutely nothing at all to do with the injury rate of motorcycle riders in general.
Women’s groups have fought hard and succeeded to prevent any accountability regarding how child support is spent.
And progress? At least in some states, divorcing wives will no longer be able to claim pension benefits from the ex-spouse they tried murdering (or succeeded in murdering) using contract killers:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jn-IllEbR8XZuF3efEm1jqokuvmQD9GB2TIG0
I think we both agree that we still have a long way to go in educating young men about the realities of marriage….it’s the content of that lesson that is in dispute.
I do agree with that. I have seen men I care for treated abominably by women, and I hope that my son will be exceedingly careful in this regard. He’s a sweet, sensitive, thoughtful kid – yeah, pure beta. I worry about him winning over some woman with his smarts and good looks, only to discover in time that she’s bored or tempted by some hooligan.
A lot of times guys will slum it and have sex with a girl below their attractiveness level if it’s a sure thing. Doesn’t mean they would ever consider dating them. As I said earlier, I think this contributes to girls overvaluing their own status because they seem to have a hard time mentally separating the two. They think that if a high status guy will pump & dump them then they must be high status too… not so.
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I understand the whole social proof thing, and that being a guy with option makes you more attractive. I think it’s definitely contributed to my successes over the years when I’ve played it right… but I was thinking, maybe the girls’ depression lies with their failure to rope in a guy with high status and lots of options. The “relationship rejection” causes her whole “special snowflake” fantasy to come crashing down. Maybe this has more to do with her depression than the actual casual sex? It just seems to me like a lot of girls are shooting too high and attempting to date guys that have zero intent to be in a committed relationship.
Susan, I didn’t see this comment by you until I left one at the bottom of the page. There I gave my theory why I think casual sex might make girls depressed.
But to add on to that… Like I said earlier, I don’t like to see anybody suffering, but I really have a hard time feeling sorry for the girls in this situation. They know what they’re getting themselves into when they go after guys who have no intention of commitment, and have proven it with their track record of pump & dumps over the years…
It would be like me going from Burger King to Burger King around the city and continually being depressed that nobody would serve me a Big Mac.
“Dan, I’m assuming you mean here that a promiscuous woman isn’t relationship material? ”
Absolutely not. Aldonza provided some counter-examples upthread, and I’ve seen a few of my own.
I’m saying I can be sexually attracted to a woman regardless of her whether or not I see her as relationship material. I think some women make the mistake of thinking that if a guy has sex with her, he must like her. Others think that if they are sexually irresistible enough, a guy will want a relationship with her.
The guy at the now-defunct manslations website explains it better than I can. I don’t have time to go through his archives right now, but I’d encourage you to check him out. his stuff is entertaining and on point.
Agreed.
Hmm…Susan, I really think it depends on the woman. For women, if they feel pressured into having sex when they’d rather not–not just casual sex, but being pressured by boyfriends to have sex before they’re ready, or feeling pressured by society to be porn queens for partners when they’re not into, I dunno, bondage or something–then I can absolutely believe it would lead to depression. If you’re having sex when you’d rather not, or if you’re having a kind of sex that you’d rather not have because of your boyfriend or because your friends tell you that you should like it, then it’s really depressing.
For the casual sex example, if a woman has it because she feels like she has to have it or else she’ll be labeled a prude/frigid bitch/whatever, then yeah, that would be depressing. And if she has casual sex and the guy treats her like a prostitute, then yeah, also depressing. But I think it’s always depressing to have sex and feel used; it can happen within a relationship as easily as within a one-night-stand. If your boyfriend of five years is a selfish asshole in bed and makes you feel like a masturbatory aid, you’d probably /prefer/ a one-night-stand that you knew would be a one-night-stand where your partner treated you respectfully (those happen, too).
As for the sociopath question, I don’t think it’s guys pursuing hookups that makes it sociopathic, I think it’s treating the girl in question like a…masturbatory aid, as I said before. You can go for a ONS and be respectful, as long as you’re open about your intentions and you’re not a total jerk about it. There are always going to be mixed signals, on /both/ sides: guys who want a relationship and are thrilled to get with their crush, only to find out that the girl was scratching an itch. Still, if you’re open and sweet about it, you can minimize hurt feelings. If, on the other hand, you can’t find any girls who are interested in casual sex only (doubtful), so you trick someone into thinking you want something more serious so you can get sex, well, I wouldn’t call it sociopathic, but it’s not nice at all. Women have feelings, too, no matter how badly you want to get some.
Someone asked for feedback from women who’ve had casual sex vs indiscriminant sex.
I’ve NEVER had indiscriminant sex OR drunken sex, however, if by “casual sex” you mean sex without wanting a commitment, yes. Personally, I’d only want a commitment from someone I loved, and I never “fell in love” with anyone I had casual sex with. They were mutually beneficial short-term flings. I think they fell harder for me than I for them.
And I love the phrases:
“don’t like the bullshit? get out from under the a-hole” and
“don’t buy wholesale then complain that it’s cheap”
But I don’t get, “Don’t write a check with your mouth that you can’t cash with your ass.”
Anyone care to translate?
To follow up on my “depends on the woman” point–which I didn’t in the previous post–I’d argue that there are women who want just casual sex. Not because it’s all they can get, and not because they’ve been told that’s what they should want, but because they actually prefer it for whatever reason. I’m not saying they’re the majority, but they’re definitely out there. I’d doubt that they’d be scarred by lots of casual sex, because that’s how they roll.
I have no doubt that there are women out there who are having casual sex that they’d rather not have, maybe because it’s all they think they can get, maybe because they’re in love with some guy and they’re doing some FWB thing to try to get him to agree to a relationship, maybe because they’ve been pressured into it by whomever, maybe because they think it’s the thing to do before they settle down later on, and so on. And if that’s the case, yes, I think it would be difficult emotionally after a while. I don’t know that it would be any more difficult emotionally than having a series of romantic relationships that went sour, though.
Apparently a good number of folks do believe fathers are unnecessary…
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/are-fathers-necessary/8136/
Bear witness to the new Lesbian World Order!!!
In MA, as in a few other states, about 96% of alimony payers are men, and alimony is often for life.
Men should really be wary of marriage in this day and age.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/06/13/the_chilling_effect_of_states_divorce_laws/
“Alimony law is largely case law, not statute. Many legislators are shocked to hear the feudal details, unique to Massachusetts. But not shocked enough to reform the law.
The laws are gender neutral, but the facts are not: 96 percent of alimony payers are men, who often must give 30 to 40 percent of gross earnings to educated and sometimes employed women. Alimony does not automatically end or decline at retirement, even after an ex-wife has gotten an equitable share of marital assets. This applies in no-fault divorces, to the middle-class, and to millionaires.
Alimony is usually ordered until the recipient dies or remarries, even for couples in their 30s and 40s. Judges who set time limits may be overruled on appeal. When children are involved, the court usually awards only child support, about 30 percent of a father’s income, which ends when children turn 23. Then mothers frequently receive alimony at the same or higher levels, for life.
Many highly skilled workers who took time off to raise children – nurses, paralegals, financial analysts – are often not expected to work again, even if they divorce at 40. Some judges push them to work again; many don’t.
Instead of remarrying, which would end their alimony, many women live with boyfriends and become the lifelong charges of their ex-husbands – and, only in Massachusetts, of their ex-husbands’ new wives, whose resources are routinely and circuitously considered in determining alimony awards.”
So what is your point, Ms. Walsh? That women have NO desire for casual sex with anyone but many of them repeatedly engage in it anyway? That they are sexually attracted to more than 20% of all men?
What is your point? That the gynocentric feminist system basically attacks the few sexual double standards that benefit men while protecting the more numerous double standards that benefit women? Color me shocked.
BTW I hate the phrase “double standards”. There are no such standards in sex relations. Men and women will always be held to DIFFERENT standards because they are DIFFERENT.
“Wow, that is very interesting. I really didn’t know twice as many women had reproduced. It’s good to know that women aren’t drawn to those dominant men for no good reason”
Exactly. It explains many things. We should keep in mind that alphas and betas complement each other and a healthy society creates a balance between them because there is a need for both. Alphas can do stuff that betas cannot, and betas can do stuff that alphas cannot. One of the things that kept women’s alpha chasing in check in the past was that there weren’t many alphas around to begin with. Historically, the life of the average alpha guy was rather dangerous – I’m sure alphas on average had a higher mortality rate than betas. He had a good chance of dying in war, a (workplace) accident, duel, bar fight or getting killed by angry husbands, fathers and brothers before he had the chance of having sex with many women. Alphas were scarce and I guess women’s desire for alphas is Mother Nature’s way of balancing this out to make sure enough alphas reproduce.
Current society hugely upsets this balance in two ways:
1) Life is more secure. Excess men are no longer culled in bloody conventional wars and angry fathers, husbands and their pals no longer hunt down womanizing and cuckolding alphas because it is illegal.
2) Boys who would otherwise grow up to be higher betas or alphas are cut down with sexual harassment laws, anti-male indoctrination in schools and the media etc. and therefore turn into artificially betatized working drones having zero confidence when approaching women.
The result is that we have an unhealthy surplus of natural alphas AND artificial betas. No wonder the sexual marketplace is messed up completely!
(Lawrence Auster has written about these things before:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/014003.html
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/014005.html)
Sixty days… Two hundred…
Yeah. I could do that. Honestly, that would be tough. I’d probably be doing real work by the sixth week. But I’m willing to do it for science. You just let me know when you’re ready to set it up.
Well, I’ve heard it as “Don’t write checks your ass can’t cash.” I think it basically means “Don’t promise things that you can’t deliver.”
I agree that this is a problem – women fail to understand that they can snag the hot guy for a night, but no way will he commit to them. In fact, the hot guy will probably not be interested in committing to a 9 or 10 in this market.
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One of the things I spend a lot of time trying to understand and then writing about is how men think, how their brains work, and what they look for in a woman. Women find it extremely difficult to understand the differences, and we often project our hopes and dreams onto some guy that just doesn’t care. We may not like the truth, but we need it know it or we’re just sitting ducks.
That website is defunct! That’s a shame – it was not that long ago his book came out! I’ll visit, though.
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You sound busy, but if I’d love to know what you look for in a woman for a relationship. If being sexually irresistible doesn’t do it (though I know it can’t hurt!), what else do you require?
Hi Mostly, thanks for de-lurking! I agree that what’s bound to be depressing for women is disappointed hopes, or being treated as a dumpster. And there’s a lot of that going on. I am sure there are women that say straight up, “I’m looking for casual sex, definitely don’t want a relationship.” Some of them mean it, some are being defensive/self-protective. I don’t tend to get the ones who mean it as readers, obviously, and to be honest I haven’t ever had a young woman even tell me that’s what she wanted.
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What the research shows is that the culture, with its low expectations for intimacy and commitment, is very difficult, even damaging, for many women. Women who want casual sex will always be able to get it, regardless of society’s mores. But we can’t have our cake and eat it too. Either female sexuality is restrained, either through behavior or a decreased supply of women, or male commitment is restrained, as there is no incentive.
Thanks for sharing, IHCS! It’s interesting that you say you never fell in love with someone you had casual sex with. Did you experience the bonding or attachment that women often feel after sex? Or were you able to remain emotionally uninvested?
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Have you had the experience of falling in love, and if so, how did the sex differ?
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Don’t write a check with your mouth that you can’t cash with your ass:
Don’t tell yourself or anyone else that you’re DTF if you don’t really want to follow through. If you talk the talk, you’d better be ready to walk the walk. And if that doesn’t work, stop.
Interesting. I would agree that the feminization of schools has taken the masculinity right out of many boys. I hadn’t thought before of men being turned into betas artificially, but that makes total sense.
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I do think that betas are well-positioned today in one sense – they are much more likely to possess the skills that lead to success in our economy. They can certainly derive social status from this, while their high testosterone counterparts struggle in the information economy.
I’m not suggesting that women making poor choices are victims of anything but their own bad judgment. I don’t expect you or anyone else to pity them. We are all responsible for our own behavior – that’s way I ended the post by saying that if it feels like crap, stop doing it. To be honest, the women I sympathize with are the ones who are not allowing themselves to be pumped and dumped, and like the article says, wind up spending most Saturday nights without any male attention.
More or less. I have two points:
1. Women, for the most part, do not have casual sex for the orgasm, which is unlikely in any case. They have casual sex for the validation that they are desirable. They also have casual sex in the misguided belief that everyone else is doing so. They also perceive, accurately, that relationships that have taken hold started out with hooking up. On college campuses, hooking up is the primary pathway to commitment, though it happens in only 12% of cases. Research shows that the percentage of women willing to hook up plummets between freshman and junior year. After getting pumped and dumped once or twice, many women retreat to the sidelines, waiting out college and hoping that post-college life will include more traditional dating.
2. I think any given woman may be attracted to 20% of the men she comes into contact with. But I don’t believe it’s the same 20% for all women. Some women can’t resist the bad boys, and love that dopamine high they get from them. Others are risk-averse and attracted to stable men. There’s a wide spectrum of what women find attractive. It’s true that a man has to generate sexual attraction, and the best way he can do that is by displaying his sense of self-worth. Assholes are good at that, but again, not all women respond well to arrogance. I know for a fact that it’s not about looks – there are many hideously ugly high T types who do well with women, and many handsome beta guys who don’t.
Hi back! It’s hard to sympathize, to be honest, with women who say they’re fine with a casual relationship but actually aren’t and then who get mad when their partners take them at their word.
That goes for guys, too, though. A lot of guys got really upset at “500 Days of Summer,” a movie where the girl says she wants a casual relationship, the guy says fine, and then gets mad later when she tries to keep things light. When the relationship falls apart, he is devastated, but other characters are all “Um, she told you she wanted to keep it casual, what did you expect?” And yet I see so many online discussions of the film where the male posters are raging over what a bitch the girl was in this movie, how she toyed with his emotions and crushed his heart, how she led him on with the promise of intimacy and a deeper relationship but wound up using him. Sounds a little familiar, no?
What a horrible article! I am thoroughly disgusted. Way to drum up support for female gay marriage at the expense of men just after Father’s Day. How ironic that this should follow their End of Men piece. The commenters know what’s up.
I just spent about half an hour researching alimony. What a mess. And my own state of MA is among the worst. Oddly, I couldn’t find a statistic on what percentage of divorces include alimony in the U.S. One Phila. lawyer said 15%, but I have no idea if that’s accurate, and I don’t know how it varies by state.
Good point about 500 Days of Summer! One of the reasons I think it has generated so much controversy, though, is that those circumstances are rare. We don’t expect women to call the shots in that way, or to keep it casual. Of course, Zoe D did want a serious relationship – once she fell in love with someone else. The male character failed to understand that she just didn’t love him.
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People should be judged by their actions. If a woman or man goes into something casual, the other person may assume they’re willing to have sex without strings. (Obviously, this assumes everyone is being honest about what they want.)
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In my experience, men who say they don’t want a relationship nearly always mean it and stick to it. Women are more likely to pretend not to want one, which is hardly surprising, if they think that will get them in the door. The problem is that it’s just not an effective strategy.
Yes, I think trying to use sex as a way to get your, uh, foot in the door with a partner and try for a relationship down the road is ineffective. I think that if someone doesn’t want a relationship with you, no amount of sex–no matter how amazing–is going to convince them otherwise.
Of course, if you wait to have sex with a person as a way to see if that person’s going to stick around, that person could just as easily dump you the moment you do have sex. In fact, the problem with doing that is that while waiting might weed out those people who aren’t serious about a relationship, it could just as easily ensure that a person sticks around for the challenge of getting you to give in and who doesn’t actually care about you at all.
I think, ultimately, that any “strategy” is going to be ineffective in these scenarios. There are at least three potential outcomes here, and they all depend on the intentions/character of the guy. It’s a factor over which the girl exercises no control:
1. If the guy’s an asshole, he’ll judge you for whenever it is you have sex with him (whether it’s after the first date or after three months), he’ll dump you as soon as you do have sex with him, and he’ll treat you like a whore for having “submitted” to the sex.
2. If the guy isn’t an asshole, but doesn’t want a relationship with you, you’ll never be able to get a relationship with him. There is no tactic you could use to get him to want a relationship with you, even hot sex. He’ll hopefully be nice and respectful about the sex you have, but there’s nothing you could do to make it something other than it is. Take it or leave it. The problem here is if the guy isn’t clear about his intentions upfront, which can obviously result in hurt feelings and worse if it’s believed there’s more to the relationship than there is.
3. If the guy is a good person who wants a relationship with you, he won’t care when you have sex with him (whether it’s after the first date or after three months), he’ll be willing to wait until you’re comfortable to have sex (again, whenever that is) without threatening to bolt, and he’ll be respectful of you because he actually cares about your feelings.
So if you have the bad luck to choose I guess the only control in this situation is a girl judging the character of her partners before she starts going out with them. Sadly, jerks and users don’t walk around with convenient labeling.
Im just dropping in for a quic convo cause I had to jump from the conversation yesterday. I was not being productive at work at all. Too many interesting posts to add into. But i wanted to say Susan remember when you first started and you would have maybe 15-25 comments on a post. 250 and counting. 3 days straight of discussion. And you have a bunch of other posts now that are 100+. You’re not hitting chords, you’re jamming “sweet child of mine” on ‘em.
The reason I had issue with that movie is not that she said let’s keep it simple and he deeply wanted more but lied about so “felt played”. I thought he was an idiot for that and didn’t feel the sympathy. I didn’t like how the moment they were done she was fucking getting married. I was like woah really. She didn’t lead him on with a promise of intimacy but, and this parrallel might be strong, it was almost like she was testing whether she could have a relationship with a beta(he was a beta let’s be honest) and decided that’s not for her, as say a lesbian would try out a man and then say, naw I really do like chicks, ok bye now. It just felt odd to me, and while I thought the movie was going to be different, she turned into typical manic pixie dream girl at that moment.
Yeah maybe indie romance movies aren’t for me. I sit through the whole movie thinking “man the fuck up son!”. Sigh.
Thank you so much for the kind words! Yeah, I am really loving this whole blog scene. I find it incredibly gratifying to have the discussion going on, especially between the sexes. I am learning a ton from both men and women! And I especially appreciate the time people take to share their thoughts. On this thread, for example, you’ve had a ton of great input – and I fully understand how time consuming that is. I love it, even if your employer doesn’t :-/
N = 1
That is absolutely untrue! I’ve posted before about the preacher I knew who met and married a French Canadian woman who had gotten around before she converted to his religious sect. She was so grateful to finally have found a man who treated her in a loving way, and she converted and never ran around again, and from everything I could see they loved each other and it was a wonderful marriage.
This reminds me of another preacher in the same sect when I was young. The preacher’s wife was a former “firecracker” as they said, and she wore RED LIPSTICK!!!! Both of them told about how she had been a “firecracker” before they got married. In this sect, becoming converted meant you changed your life, and they really believed it…no one held these women’s pasts against them.
Whether or not a visible religious conversion should be necessary to be believed is another story…but I have seen happy marriages where the wife was a former “firecracker” and openly expressed how thankful she was to have met a loving man and how she didn’t run around any more.
To answer your question Susan, yes, we both felt attachment and bonding (oxytocin at work) but we genuinely LIKED each other. These were not one-nighters but STRs. However, we were not in love and making love did not make us “fall in love”. I never understood people who became suddenly attached to someone just after having sex. Does that really happen? Oxytocin wears off after a while (quite soon in fact) so I don’t get this. Maybe it’s just an urban myth?
That was my point too. Anecdotes are effective for swaying people’s emotions because we’re all wired to respond to the human story. But they do little to paint a picture of what situations might be average or common. And they certainly shouldn’t be given any weight as “proof” or “evidence” of anything but one person’s misery.
I’d be interested in knowing what your definition of “feminine” and “masculine” is, other than “strippers are masculine.”
I love hot, sexual women. I was in a few relationships in the past that lasted for many years that sprung out of first dates where we ended up sleeping together.
One of those girls was far warmer and sweeter than many of the girls I dated subsequently who themselves “held out” for sex.
I think a lot of this back and forth is cultural, and frankly, very gynocentric. If women want to go back to the way things were, you’re going to have to unring a lot of bells, and that ain’t gonna happen.
If women want the freedom to do whatever they want without legal or cultural restraints (welcome to American feminism), they’ll have to take the good with the bad.
Wow, with that financial incentive, women should be flocking to divorce courts. And yet, MA has the lowest divorce rate in the nation. Go figure.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/divorce-rate-in-gay-marri_b_267259.html
That’s all true, but at the risk of sounding naive and/or whiny, I just wish men wouldn’t do this. It’s mean. If you think a girl is beneath you, why can’t you just leave her alone?
I’m not talking about men having sex with women who are actively pursuing them – I think the woman more or less signed up for that. But I’ve had experiences with men who approached me, seemingly on their own initiative, only to find that they were probably just looking to play me. And then I read the comments here and find that that’s apparently because these men (a) magically read my mind and sensed some interest on my part that may or may not have been there and (b) decided they would try to get laid *even though* I clearly must not have been hot enough for them and obviously, had I known my proper value and place in the world, I would have already known that. They didn’t succeed on their terms and I didn’t succeed on mine, so I guess that’s a small consolation, but still.
Does that make sense?
Escarondito, the man you saw and sympathized with in your Gaming Store – well, you don’t know the whole story. How do you know he wasn’t a total asshole when he was married and cheated on his wife and then absconded from Child Support Payments and now she’s “getting back at him” by making him buy a game for HIS children (afterall)?
You also don’t know that he’s paying for his wife’s boyfriend’s vacation.
You saw this dude for 5 minutes and only saw what you saw. You don’t KNOW the history.
Personally, I think marriage and family is a raw deal for BOTH men and women currently and I think really smart people will avoid all of it.
But just because some came strolling into your store looking like something the cat dragged in and you heard “loud talking” comeing from his ex-wife’s side on the phone does not mean he is neccessarily “the victim” in this case.
How many frazzled and broke single moms do you see?
I know several who are struggling financially. This myth that they are living “high on the hog” off their ex-husband’s payments are just that – MYTH. Unless their ex is Donald Trump or comparable.
In fact, my neighbor’s ex husband has quit his job, concealed from her his new job and what he gets paid, and has stopped paying child support – but HAS bought a brand new house for his girlfriend.
His new girlfriend is more important to him than his 2 small children!
And this single mom is struggling like anything financially and NOT dating anyone. She has NO TIME and NO ENERGY. She is completely frazzled.
Regarding pre-nups: one of my ex-bf’s asked me if we got married would I sing a pre-nup. The dude had $400 in the bank! And he’s currently jobless and shacked up with a Sugar Momma who goes to work every day while he stays home chatting on the net and telling people he’s an “entrepreneur”.
Really, forget marriage – I don’t know why people even bother “dating” anymore or establishing relationships of ANY kind.
Just keep a tight circle of a few good friends and masterbate!
Hollenhund, can you explain what you mean by this and give some examples?
“Boys who would otherwise grow up to be higher betas or alphas are cut down with sexual harassment laws”
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Vincent Ignatius: “I’ll bet every single one of those men is a beta. It’s impossible to be a good man and support a woman who doesn’t deserve it.”
Hold on a minute! Beta men are not “good” men?!?!?!
Like you, I also get bored with a man very quickly and must move on or get my poly on. HOWEVER, the men I date KNOW this about me BEFOREHAND, I don’t mislead them. I only date men who are NOT looking for an exclusive long-term committment but rather just a mutally beneficial STR.
However, if either of us ever want to settle down and have a family (I don’t, but you might), we will have to give up our dualistic concepts of “excitement and boredom” and base our relationships on something more substantial like “duty” and “honor” perhaps.
Not an attractive proposal for me, but MOST people seem to buy into it by the age of 40 or so.
Perhaps you and I should “do coffee” sometime? LOL. I keed. I keed.
Yes. This isn’t theoretical. I know examples of this including myself and friends of mine who are exactly in this situation. The issue is “social proof” (a subject I just wrote about at my blog after reading your comment). All of the positive qualities that men such as myself have do not matter to women if other women have black balled us. A woman is not thinking about the positive qualities of guys like myself. She is thinking about what must be wrong with this guys like me that no other woman wants them. She figures that there is something even though she can’t see it and it’s best to avoid us because in her mind we’re probably full time serial killers and part time ax murderers.
Try being a 30 year old virgin, something I have already experienced or a 35 year old virgin which I’m not that far away from.
While this is true, it doesn’t matter without social proof.
It’s about social proof not if a man in experienced is various sexual techniques. Also sexual inexperience and relationship inexperience are used as proxies for each other a lot.
I know plenty of men who are admired by other men, but women want nothing to do with those men.
Due to my perspective as an inexperienced men all casual sex is the same to me regardless of context.
On surveys when it comes to sex they all come with a disclaimer that men are likely to overrerport number of partners and sexual frequency and women are likely to underreport number of partners and sexual frequency. This is nothing new.
But social proof is not intrinsically related to sexual experience. Yeah, you’ve got to have confidence and savoir faire, but that has nothing intrinsically to do with sex. Besides, social proof doesn’t just magically happen: it’s not an arbitrary process, and the fact that people are self-aware of the concept demonstrates that it’s not all-powerful. Jane Austen’s books, on one reading, convey that “social proof”–shall we just call it “popularity”?–is not a good criterion for finding a mate. All of her main heroes are “popular” men, but they are popular on account of their virtue, not necessarily manners/routines.
. No one needs to know that you lack sexual experience. The solution is either to not tell them, which is easily done, or to tell them in a way that raises your value in their eyes. The easiest question to hit out of the park on a first date is “why are you still single?”
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In conclusion, it’s not like you have a hymen.
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But I challenge you to ask that question seriously to yourself. If the answer is, “because I’m so awesome and caring and great,” I would charitably suggest you’re deceiving yourself. Make a list of 10 things that you don’t like about yourself unconnected with “game” concepts. Alright–now what are you waiting for. Fix them.
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In this thread, at least, everything is a “but” with you, W&N. Cease that thinking. Replace it with an inveterate optimism: You can! Do whatever you have to do; only this time, don’t do it for the women, do it for yourself. There’s worse things in the world than being 35 and a virgin. Live your life in such a way that it’s not an issue; so that when a girl asks you why you’re still single, you can honestly say “well, it used to bother me, but I live a pretty exciting life. Always running around one place then another. I never felt like sacrificing that for anything long term. Unlike a lot of guys, I’m not scared of sleeping alone. What’s your excuse?”
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This may be complete Bravo Sierra. Don’t take me that seriously. It’s just one man’s opinion. And you know what they say about opinions.
Wow! You have quite the following! I blogged about this post yesterday. Another relationship coach blog post was promoting casual sex following a divorce for both men and women. I happen to disagree. Like this research states, as a woman, I want more than “just sex” and I think it’s a little sad that post-divorce women are looking at sex as a way to validate how attractive or desirable they are.
Really?!! I had no idea – do you care to speculate on why that is? Is it because we are a very homogeneous state politically? Is it because the divorce rate for educated couples is so low, and there are so many universities here?
Lisette, I fully understand your frustration and your taking offense. Getting attention from a handsome guy, only to see him disappear if you’re not DTF, is very demoralizing. Of course, you’re not alone. I think it’s important to understand the nature of men without judgment. They are highly motivated to have sex, to the point that they are willing to have sex with most women who would give the OK. If they have options, they’ll go with women they are most attracted to, but at closing time many good-looking guys will happily leave a bar with a woman that they would not date. Honestly, I think it’s very, very rare for an exceptionally hot guy to make a good long-term partner. In my own circle, there is one – he’s a vet, used to be a model, and his wife is far less attractive than he is. They have three grown sons and a very stable marriage. But this sort of thing is quite rare.
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Women are fortunate in that we feel attracted to men on a wide variety of levels – it is not all about looks. As always, I say look for a man of good character who makes you think and challenges you.
That story is bs and you know it. Your friend is just angry because she doesn’t get a life a leisure marrying her “nice” guy (i.e. sucker). Courts never award pitiful amounts of child support. The business assets he “hid” were probably from before the marriage, that’s why they were shielded. Poor golddigger.
There’s no reason a guy should be a slave just because he was married for a few years (probably of misery or he wouldn’t have left) Men don’t just leave for younger women. They leave because they are mistreated and then if they are attractive, younger women go after them.
Sadly, jerks and users don’t walk around with convenient labeling.
Isn’t that the truth. I’ll say again that I think women should have sex when they want to have sex. If a woman is concerned about being played, she would do well to wait until she feels that she has a sense of the guy’s character.
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I agree with your potential outcomes, except that I would observe that many of the men who comment – on this thread and others – do not want a LTR with a very experienced woman. You can say, “well, then, he’s an asshole,” and that’s fine. But the truth is that the academic research clearly shows that men want promiscuity and sexual experience for short-term mating, and the opposite for long-term mating. Obviously, there are exceptions, but men state that they view a woman’s sexual history as an indicator of how selective she is, her own level of self-esteem, as a predictor of her ability to be monogamous in the future, and as a reflection of her ability to sustain an emotional connection. I think this is understandable, if not politically correct, but it doesn’t matter what I think – that’s the reality for many, though not all, men.
The effect of oxytocin on attachment is definitely not an urban myth. Oxytocin for women, and vasopressin for men, are the chemicals that trigger the “falling in love” switch. So while the chemicals do of course dissipate in the system, the brain has entered a new mode. It is preoccupied with thoughts of the other. Helen Fisher talks about this process in exactly that way – a switch is flipped, and everything changes. I don’t think this happens in a one-night stand. I do think it’s a real risk for women in FWBs, though of course it depends on the woman. Some people are more impulsive and therefore more likely to fall in love. Of course, one’s susceptibility to dopamine – the feel good chemical – also plays an important role.
WHERE does this man live & how old is he? I’m attractive, a virgin for the same reasons he is, and I would love to meet him. I’ve been looking everywhere for a guy like him. Seriously. Not kidding in any way, shape, or form.
I just want to know why I have to play by rules that weren’t decided by myself? I didn’t choose the sexual revolution, feminism, or to be born in this fucked-up time. I don’t want to take “the good with the bad.” Fuck that. The good isn’t that great, and the bad is terrible. It’s not my problem there’s a bunch of girls out there ruining things for me (and themselves) by having sex with everything that moves. Therefore, I make my own rules. If someone doesn’t want to play by my rules, they can take their toys and go home.
No one would believe me, but no guys that I liked enough to tell that I’m remaining a virgin until marriage has left me in disgust. Most were intrigued that I had enough self-esteem to value myself enough to be firm in that stance. All respected my beliefs. One may have stuck around to game me into bed, but he had other problems that ended things before we were intimate (it wasn’t about the lack of sex). He still calls/texts/emails once a week trying to be friends with me although we didn’t work out. Unfortunately, I have enough friends and I definitely don’t need to be friends with someone like him.
Girls, I’m telling you, it is possible that YOU ARE ENOUGH to keep a guy around. Work on your personality instead of your p*ssy. You don’t have to have sex with them when you don’t want to as a kind of exchange to keep their interest. This is coming from someone in NYC as well — it’s not like I’m in some small town in the midwest.
Vera,
He’d be a catch, I’m sure. But, surely, you can find men like him at Churches and synagogues etc? Here’s a hint: for men, the more traditional the religious form of worship, the better. In some of these places there’s not one good looking girl that attends, or so I hear.
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But, really, do you expect for me to divulge such information to a stranger over the internet? I have too great a respect for my friend’s–not to mention my own– privacy. Besides, this guy’s got a lot of options; girls come to him. Even if you were in geographic proximity to him, I’m sure he’d laugh at me were I to offer to introduce him to an internet friend: I’d never hear the end of it!
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But, if it’s any consolation, I know men like this in excess. They make for very good and loyal friends. I can’t imagine how they’d be difficult to meet. . . (and I currently reside in a place where, statistically, they should be very hard to meet indeed!).
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PS
A girl who thinks or, even worse, knows she’s attractive is a blight I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy
That is fairly simple. Such laws criminalize all sexual advances by unattractive men – notice how they refer to ‘unwanted’ attention – thereby making it very easy for women to weed out beta males. (Whether they were designed to accomplish this in the first place is anyone’s guess…). They are one of the things that massively rig the entire mating game in women’s favor.
Your average beta guy has a good chance of getting slapped with such an accusation or at least hearing about a guy he knows who suffered the same fate. This will greatly reduce his ability to approach women with a sense of dominance and confidence.
Feminist indoctrination and anti-male mandatory medication in elementary and high school have exactly the same effect. The average white beta boy learns that his forefathers engaged in a massive genocidal conspiracy called ‘white patriarchy’ with the ultimate goal of enslaving women and colored people for all eternity and consigning them to servitude. He also learns that the testosterone running through his veins is a toxic pollutant responsible for all the evil that ever took place in the world (violence, aggression, wars, economic bubbles etc.) and therefore he must strip himself of all assertive, dominant impulses in order to become a good little beta working drone. He will also be forced to take all sorts of medication to achieve this. And, of course, he must suck up to girls because if women ruled the world there would be no violence, no wars and we would all be living in perfect harmony.
The end result is that you have masses of clueless beta drones who were taught to display exactly the type of behavior women find repulsive i.e. supplicating and pedestalizing women with zero confidence and self-assertion.
“Really, forget marriage – I don’t know why people even bother “dating” anymore or establishing relationships of ANY kind. Just keep a tight circle of a few good friends and masterbate!”
Which is exactly what millions of slacking young men are doing in the U.S.
“Hold on a minute! Beta men are not “good” men?!?!?!”
Well, let’s be realistic – many of them aren’t. They fail to attract women, plus they suck up to and support women who don’t deserve it.
And BTW, would you care to explain how exactly marriage today is a raw deal for women? Is it more of a raw deal than it was 20, 50 or 100 years ago.
“Is it because the divorce rate for educated couples is so low, and there are so many universities here?”
I guess that pretty much explains it. Many of consumption marriages.
“I do agree with that. I have seen men I care for treated abominably by women, and I hope that my son will be exceedingly careful in this regard. He’s a sweet, sensitive, thoughtful kid – yeah, pure beta. I worry about him winning over some woman with his smarts and good looks, only to discover in time that she’s bored or tempted by some hooligan.”
Just make sure he learns Game, Ms. Walsh. Shouldn’t be too difficult if he is indeed thoughtful.
It’s not my problem there’s a bunch of girls out there ruining things for me (and themselves) by having sex with everything that moves. Therefore, I make my own rules. If someone doesn’t want to play by my rules, they can take their toys and go home.
This is what a woman as gatekeeper looks like. I love this “field report” because you’re objective about the sexual marketplace, and you’ve crafted a strategy that is keeping you sane and is effective. No self-esteem or depression issue here!
A girl who thinks or, even worse, knows she’s attractive is a blight I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy.
In Western society, there are no attractive women who aren’t aware of their assets. Men are so visually oriented that only in a land of the blind could an attractive woman fail to turn heads. What men should be looking for are women who aspire to be something more than attractive – the “whole package.”
Hi, Yvette, welcome and thanks for leaving a comment! I appreciate your referencing my post on your own blog. The problems with getting validated thru sex, as you know, are:
1. the boon is very temporary
2. women know that men are not selective about sexual partners, which greatly reduces the “honor” of being singled out
3. it makes women dependent on feedback from others for self-esteem, rather than from her own personal development
Miss Walsh,
My father never spoke to me much about women. He did give me one bit of advice: “no matter how beautiful you find a girl, PJL, there’s a man walking around in the world who left her, because he’d had enough of her sh!t.”
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When my old man wants to, he can hit it out of the park. In short, I agree with you. I actually recently got through an infatuation of a girl I thought the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. When I became aware of her true character, it was indeed a sad day. And then, another very pretty girl entered the picture. She was into me, I could tell, but was just too silly to be a real love-interest. Every time I chatted with her, I could see my sister’s censorious eyes looking at me, saying “really, PJL? I mean… really?” Because I don’t string women along, I find the best thing to do in these situations is to act aloof and polite. Unfortunately, this may backfire and instead just drive her crazy with desire for you. Then you can try to drive her away by being mean and dismissive. Unfortunately, this may have the opposite effect with disastrous consequences. As a penultimate measure, you can tell her you’ve devoted your life to celibacy. You could get a one-night stand out of this one, but for moral reasons I advice against it. When all else fails and only when you really want to drive away a girl: the best thing you can do is buy her chocolates & flowers. If you attach a note declaring your undying love, I guarantee you’ll never see her again. (All of these methods have been tested by yours truly).
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You women are pretty; and if it weren’t for the fact that sooner or later you have to converse, you’d have a universal power over men. This must be why Ariel from The Little Mermaid had such a hold over the prince.
You forget, around these parts, “beta” is synonymous with “loser”.
I’ve had non-committed/casual sex as well (and I also have never had drunken or indiscriminate sex). I don’t feel particularly damaged by it. I also wasn’t going into it with the expectation that it would convince someone to want a relationship with me.
Girls, I’m telling you, it is possible that YOU ARE ENOUGH to keep a guy around.
Well, I know from discussions with my male friends that a lot of young women really *aren’t* much fun to be around out of bed. Their discussion capabilities seem limited to this weeks’ People magazine articles on Brad/Angeline/Jen and/or their latest trip to the outlet stores. If all you’ve got going on is a fake tan, french manicure and some really nice highlights, that isn’t going to make up for not being interested in anything outside of pop culture. Even the sweet girls like this can make me want to dig my eyes out with a spork after spending an evening chatting with them. And I *like* shoe shopping!
No, I do not post anonymously on a board where I already have an identity. I know Susan wouldn’t think much of a person who did that on her blog, and I stand by what I say on this blog.
Well, it’s not on HUS, but yes, in the Gamesphere, that is true.
Haha, I didn’t know sporks were still in use! I think not very bright guys like not very bright women. You do see some smart men with bimbos, in which case that takes two idiots off the market – everyone benefits.
Speaking of women with poor character, I just put up a post on Female Narcissism. It’s a fairly quick read, even though it took me about six hours to write :-/
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Personally, I can relate to the celibacy ploy. I once set my sights on the priest who officiated at a friend’s wedding. Alas, I danced with him all night but was unable to close the deal. At the time I considered it a terrible personal failure, but in retrospect I console myself with the thought that he probably preferred small boys.
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As for the magic going out of the moment when someone opens their mouth, that cuts both ways. How many handsome and debonair men have said, “She is tolerable I suppose, but she is not handsome enought to tempt me.” Or even worse: “It’s been many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable.”
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Baaaaahhhhaaaa, Jane has an answer for every question!
PJL: that’s a good idea, churches and synogogues. I haven’t tried it, so maybe I will.
“But, really, do you expect for me to divulge such information to a stranger over the internet?”
Well, it’s a bit unorthodox but I myself am a bit unorthodox. Susan knows who I am — she’s connected me with one woman before when I asked her politely on this blog if she’d mind meeting up and given her my contact information. I made a good friend this way. Also, I know if you don’t ask, you don’t receive. You could have just as well said yes. I respect your decision to decline, you don’t know me after all.
“Besides, this guy’s got a lot of options; girls come to him.”
That’s very good for him. I do as well. However, who really wants quantity over quality? I’m looking for specific things that not a lot of guys have — who cares how many people hit on me if they’re not what I’m looking for? It sounds like your friend is this way as well — looking for a special person, not hooking up with every pretty face that presents itself. As the PUAs say, beauty (handsomeness) is common.
“A girl who thinks or, even worse, knows she’s attractive is a blight I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy”
What Susan said above. Sorry, when you get stared at in the street & hit on in Starbucks, you know you’re hot. It’s a fact, not an opinion, which is why I stated it as such. It doesn’t mean I’m stuck up about it — I work very hard at maintaining my body to have the most options among guys (to increase my chances of finding that one I’m looking for) & I realize I got lucky genetically in some ways. I’m definitely more proud of my other accomplishments i had to really work for than beauty. Which is why attractive women who have other things going for them don’t particularly put that much weight on guys’ compliments about their appearance. It’s more of an “oh, that’s nice, thank you.” We didn’t do anything to get it, so it’s automatically less valuable to us. It’s clearly very important to men though.
Yes, a lot of girls are boring. Which is why I said to work on your personality, not your p*ssy.
But to be fair, a lot of guys are boring too. I’ve heard really dumb convos about Kobe’s ball playing stats vs. LeBron’s or which girl they’re sleeping with & whether she’s hot or what the latest nike shoe release is. Sorry, that is exactly the same as celebrity gossip & shopping trips.
But I agree with you — because girls want more of a long-term thing with the kind of high-quality guy who will stick around, they have to bring more to the table than just good looks. Boring guys don’t necessarily have this burden because if they’re only after sex, girls won’t find out how dumb/boring they are (or maybe even care) with a one-night stand.
Personally, I think the key question is whether these convos are had in mixed company. Guys are going to talk sports, and that’s great – it’s the way they bond. My daughter and I will dish over celebrity gossip sometimes – it’s harmless. Heck, the only thing I like about going to the dentist is reading People in the waiting room. However, thinking a man cares about Lindsay Lohan’s love life, or your thing for RPatz is selfish. Ditto for a guy who talks to his guys at length when you’re present without any thought of including you.
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