I know a lot of you guys/gals here are very successful and have your "shit" together. Do you ever ask yourself what a man or a woman of your interest has to offer to you when you seemingly have everything? I started doing this after a number of failed relationships started taking a significant toll on my well-being and the answer to this question has kept me single for a few years now (some of the happiest years too) because outside of consistent sex there is all too often nothing else. We don't even know how to "relationship" anymore. Ambitions and trying to one-up each other are taking precedence over everything else. It's really sad and reminds me of the society described in the book called "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley.
I'd say I'm in this situation. I can have any material thing I want/need and plenty to occupy me in my free time. My wife is still studying (and I'm paying for it) and is pursuing a career that I'm happy with but generally doesn't make much money.
She offers me quite a lot though. She's the only person I'm always happy to be around, I can trust her with any problems I have, we can make life plans together, she shows me things I'd otherwise not have seen as well as other ways to look at things I have seen, she thinks in a very different way to me so can come up with solutions I wouldn't have. The biggest thing is that she's someone I'm sharing my life with. Just like going to a movie, eating or playing a game is better with people around you, so is life.
This is what someone has to offer to someone who has "everything".
I'll add that we're both in our 20s and many of our friends seem to be similarly happy with their partners.
I would second this. In my dating life I was with many partners. Sex even sometimes felt empty. Some guys like this, I found that I enjoy being monogamous a lot better.
My wife is awesome. I feel recharged spending time with her. She is an excellent cook. I prefer her food to restaurants. She works part time, doesn't make crazy money but we have enough to afford a house and car. I feel happy being married.
Don't think of women as sex partners. Think of them as close trusted friends with benefits.
Although sometimes we do have our rough patches and I do fantasize about other women occasionally. Never acted on it though.
There's also a trend of men 'going their own way'. There doesn't seem to be a female equivalent yet. I wonder why this is not studied in more detail. And it seems the latest generations have a very pragmatic/utilitarian view of sexual relationships - to the point where it loses its magic. From a cost/benefit viewpoint, can't blame them.
Female here! I "went my own way" about three years ago...and it's awesome! I'm not a cat lady either...can't stand the things.
I won't deny radical Libertarianism had a lot to do with this decision, but it's basically this: if you find someone you adore, spend time with them. Have sex with them if you feel like it. If you guys don't make each other happy at some point, do some solo traveling. Spend time contemplating alone. Hang out with different people. Then, come back together.
It's incredible how much new, interesting shit you'll have to talk about when you live this way. You may fall in love with each other all over again.
I don't know if it's true that we "don't know how to relationship" anymore, rather, we're relationship-ing in a way that doesn't serve modern society/reality/whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
It doesn't sound like you went your own way at all since in your second paragraph you discuss getting involved in romantic relationships and love and doing things to improve those relationships. The fact that you're willing to break them off quickly when not happy isn't changing what you're apparently seeking only how much effort you're apparently willing to put into dealing with low points.
Yes, average life expectancy was dramatically lower than now but that's because of childhood diseases. Generally, if you made it to your 20s you'd make it to your 60's. But boy did all those children dying wreck the average life expectancy calculation!
Sapians talks a bit about how bad it was. King Edward I of England who would have had access to the best care of the time had 11 out of his 20 kids die in childhood.
Having looked in on a few of the communities like gtow and incels and such they don't seem very pragmatic. They seem unsociable, rejected and angry and instead of trying to improve on interpersonal relationship abilities or personal value they are giving up. "incels" admit to giving up, gtow claim they don't need women then spend all day sitting around talking about how happy they are without them.
>From a cost/benefit viewpoint
Trying to fit relationships into a cost/benefit viewpoint is why most of these people will always fail at relationships. You can't get the full benefit of a relationship until it is fully developed and you can't fully develop a relationship if you're in it for a positive ROI.
The answer is right in the abstract. They cite that the majority of sex is had between married couples, and that number is 80 times per year for couples in their 20s (down to 20x for couples in their 60s). Maybe the parent poster has carefully polled his married friends to determine this trend, but I suspect they're merely uncritically accepting information that aligns with their existing beliefs like we all do.
Besides the original comment just gave the number "9 less" without any other number from the paper as context so that we can evaluate the importance of the change.
From the article: "The results suggest that Americans are having sex less frequently due to two primary factors: An increasing number of individuals without a steady or marital partner and a decline in sexual frequency among those with partners."
In other words:
- Americans without partners are having sex less frequently because they increasingly have no partner to have sex with.
- Americans with partners are having sex less frequently because they are having sex less frequently.
Not enlightening, but also safe and soundly supported by evidence. The unsupported theories popping up in the comments section here would make any clickbait science journalism site happy.
While the article is interesting, I think some of the more curious part of HN crowd might find it also worthwhile to look at the actual dataset available here: http://www.gss.norc.org/ . Looking at the codebook, some of the relevant variables for analysis of this kind would be PARTNERS, SEXFREQ, NUMWOMEN, NUMMEN, PARTNRS5 (starting at p.2586).
The codebook includes nice summary tables that might alone answer some the questions you are thinking about (like here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13823544 ; I myself didn't download the data yet but could write that comment).
Are you basing this comment on personal experience? If so, congratulations! As for me, a married man who had my first child at 26, I would say 80 times a year during my late twenties is probably close to accurate. Maybe slightly low. As for the sexual activity of my peers, I have no idea! Do you?
There are probably also legions of 20-something Americans out there that simply have no prospects for sex on a regular basis.
Could this be more or less true in rural areas than urban? I have no idea. We just don't talk about it enough.
1. Averages don't work that way. 2. Congratulations, you might not be as representative sample of the population as you thought!
This is one reason why advocate visualizing the whole distribution into a some kind of graph whenever possible.
I have institutional access, and unfortunately, the paper does not describe this distribution. Fortunately, GSS data is publicly available: http://www.gss.norc.org/
edit. Outside the year 2012, when the questionnaire logic was slightly different, the mode of the distribution of 6 available categories ranging from "not at all" to "more than 3 times a week", has been almost always been "not at all". (With second peak around "2 or 3 times a week".)
I would trust few self reported surveys and especially anything involving sexuality. And then across generations. But if there were a drop, I would suspect obesity to be the main cause. After all, it may reduce the obese's interest in sex and potential partners interest in sex with the obese. Double whammy (no pun intended).
>With age and time period controlled, those born in the 1930s (Silent generation) had sex the most often, whereas those born in the 1990s (Millennials and iGen) had sex the least often.
Long commutes, economic uncertainty, mismatched job shifts, not having any free time or energy...
My partner's workday ends at 10:30-11:30 pm. I can't get any work done if I don't get up and head to work at ~6:00 am. She works Tuesday -> Sunday. I work Monday -> Friday.
But no, surely it's the fault of smartphones and smooth jazz music.
I would recommend intentionally mismatching your sleep shifts if you have a newborn in the house so you can both get excellent uninterrupted sleep. Worked great for my wife and I. WRT the main topic, the only impact was fun time was no longer immediately before or after sleep.
Something I find fascinating about the pr0n genre is heavily fictionalized fun time is almost any time other than right before or after sleep. But from what I gather of gossip about non-fictional fun time, most "settled down" couples stick exclusively to immediately before or after sleep, which is kinda weird. I can assure you all the parts work fine if you meet up at lunch time or pretty much whatever you're physically together, you don't need permission from a wall clock to have a good time.
they grew up having less distractions to spend their time/energy on, even TV wasn't part of daily routine. So once all the talking is done and there is still time to kill... I remember reading about 20 years ago about India plans to produce cheap national TV sets to help combat high population growth, i.e. to give people something to kill time with other than the activity which naturally results in new children.
What's wrong with the explanation the researchers gave in the paper abstract? They posit that it's due to the increased number of single people (less social pressure to marry, vs girls getting married at 18), and the existing married couples getting older (the paper notes that couples in their 20s have sex ~80x a year, in their 60s ~20x).
It could indeed be the explanation: if nothing else changed and there were simply more single people, then that would be the entire cause, problem solved. In that case you can investigate the question "why are there more single people" instead of the billion other possible causes of "no sex" like intimacy problems, technology, pornography, etc.
Instead, this thread is full of speculation akin to the most click-baity of science journalism: relatively boring paper goes in, crazy theories come out.
what is driving lack of intimacy? My theory is pretty controversial but it's because women are working more as well as men. Less parent time, less attachment, less intimacy. For men without a strong male figure it's even more impactful.
I think the divorce rate of previous generations has a lot to do with it. My parents divorced when I was young. It took me a long time to be able to even develop the emotional maturity to have an intimate relationship, and longer still to develop any real skill at it. I had no real role models, and the survival lesson I learn was "never be vulnerable." But vulnerability is key to intimacy. It was not until I went through a divorce of my own that I really even "got it".
And now... I'm having trouble finding a partner capable of that level of intimacy. My most recent ex-girlfriend was a brick wall; no vulnerability, no expression of deeper emotion. Just a willingness to fight and a quickness to get angry. She's convinced she's not worth loving, and so, of course, she pushed me away, questioned everything, and didn't trust me when I said, "I know you think I feel Y, but I actually feel X." She, too, is the product of divorced parents.
This really hits home. I pondered whether I should write the following string of text because they are deeply personal but I've worked up the courage to put them in writing because it's been driving me nuts and I'm sick of having to protect my parent's failures.
The earliest memory I have of my father is raging and suffocating my mother with a blanket. The whole movie is spotty. It's like my mind was trying to protect my 7 year old brain by "deleting" traumatic moments. This is the tip of the iceberg. All I can say is I've never felt safe. My biggest fear at the end of school was walking home in fear every single day that my dad might try to kill my mom.
My lifelong desire was to provide financially for my mom and younger sister so she wouldn't have to depend on my father. I've failed here but I'm still in this software game, hoping that I can finally provide the life my mom and sister is owed-my father being the world's poorest and financially irresponsible dentist.
Even as I'm writing this I'm starting to get uneasy and it's hard for me to continue. Everytime I revisit these scenes, it starts to trigger anxiety and panic.
While I think divorce is traumatic, the aftermath of toxic adults who have deep hatred for each other is even more harmful to a child.
I really wish my parents had divorced earlier. I wish I hadn't seen, experienced early childhood, teens to adulthood.
I am utterly broken. I'm 100% certain that I will remain the way I am. Unable to marry, unable to have meaningful intimate relationships. I'm 30 but I do not feel like my emotional maturity is remotely close.
But all that I can bear. As long as there's a single breath of life in me, it will go towards creating products that will solve challenging problems and get paid for it so I can find peace for my family and myself.
Hey, thanks for sharing that. I hope it was as helpful to you sharing it as it was for me reading it.
I really relate to your need to support your mom and sister. Whether I wanted it or not, I was the 'man of the house' very early on. It's extremely unfair and affected every relationship I had up until I got divorced.
I also relate to your missing/foggy memories. For a long time I couldn't remember the happy parts of my childhood. It was like life began for me when my parents divorced; and life was hell.
If you haven't, consider therapy. I can't really describe how it helped me move past the emotions of my childhood, but it did. I have no issues remembering the happier times, and I can remember the miserable times without really feeling that black dread spreading across my stomach anymore. If you're still feeling it, you're stuck, and it's okay to get help with it.
Trust me when I say you are not utterly broken. You've been tenacious in your pursuit of peace, be tenacious in your pursuit of a whole self.
>"I know you think I feel Y, but I actually feel X."
That really is an emotionally mature and aware thing to be able to say. Kudos for working hard to get there. If any written material helped you develop it, I'm eager to learn of them.
I'm not really sure how I got from A to B except age, pain, and a low tolerance for bullshit (especially my own). My sister believes we are exceptionally analytical and that it has helped us to develop because we are able to be self-critical (not in a pejorative sense). (She's a detective, so maybe she's onto something.) I know that at some point I realized the fear of pain was worse than pain and suddenly it was easy to be emotionally honest with myself and others.
I'd take facebook, unlimited ultra-specific porn, distraction devices in everyone's pockets, long commutes, and lack of 1-1 time over women working. It takes many many leaps of logic through many fields of study to believe that because children don't have a stay at home mother they're less intimate.
I'm old enough that I dated about 6 coworkers and married one for about 20 years so far. Work is intimate and that leads to relationships. If you can date there, you're obviously going to get more action. I get the feeling I met my future wife right about on the border where earlier, like in the 80s, when management found out I was dating a hot coworker I sort of got frat boy high fives and maybe a comment about how lucky I was and I wish I was still your age and at most maybe a "be sure to behave yourself at work, but have fun" comments, but after my wife and I got married, it appears trying to date in the workforce as portrayed in the media would result in summary execution by firing squad at dawn by HR at absolute best possible case. At least per written policy.
Then again I read stories about workplace harassment of women in Silicon Valley and the public stories of sexual harassment in tech show its way over the top than anything I saw or heard of from decades ago. This might be one of those corporate "what they say has nothing to do with what they do" things, kinda like diversity training.
My advice WRT dating coworkers is if either of you tend toward high school drama, its going to end absolutely horrifically, but if you're both adults then working with an ex is not really all that bad. Oh and if "never trash talk an ex" is good life advice, "never trash talk an ex who's also a coworker" is good advice times a million.
I don't know how much it's true in America, but here in Europe I see men moving to high paying jobs in already expensive cities (and making the cities even more expensive for women to move to) and women moving to cheaper cities (where they are able to get job for themselves) as the biggest factor in not having sex.
Internet also helped the explosion of long-distance relationships where people are having sex for a weekend in a month even if they are in monogam relationships.
Well, there's people self-identifying, and there's people living the lifestyle, and the groups don't necessarily have to match up, like in the closet I guess.
With respect to living the lifestyle, Time has an interesting article on the percentage of college grads living at home after graduation, aka failure to launch. We'll assume 50:50 male:female although of course not all degree fields are 50:50, and we'll assume that living in moms basement means the sex life is essentially zilch.
So half of English lit grads, 40% of CS/IT grads, 30% of engineers, more than half of history majors.
You could argue that the extrapolated trend around 30 is more relevant than just out of school and trying to find a new career, in which case its merely in the 10% to 20% range depending on major.
Far too many college grads are produced than there are jobs for them, by integer multiples too many. Its the opposite for skilled trades, you'll make a lot more money and demand is intense for electricians so I'd imagine "failure to launch" for journeyman electricians is exclusively limited to, like, in home hospice care of ill parents and similar, so figure that rounds down to about zero although I don't have figures.
Maybe unemployed college grads living at home make it work, I never had to do it, but I imagine it would be awkward having uni roommate conversations with your parents and little sister to get them out of the house when you're having someone come over, or I guess they could stay home and listen, or just ewww.
Personally I came home from the Army while going to school in the day and I couldn't take the parenting for more than a couple weeks while I was doing the school GI bill thing, of course that's all the time I needed to get an apartment and car and start school and stuff. Where are you going who you gonna hang out with how late will you be out remember tonight is a school night do I know their parents oh can I meet this girl she sounds nice, is kinda cute or tolerable around thirteen but not a 20-something adult. My score while living at home was definitely zero, although I was too busy setting up apartment, car, school, all that stuff to go out anyway.
So in summary, mid level double digit percentages. Not a rounding error.
But people living at home after graduation isn't the same thing as "Men Going Their Own Way". Even underemployment doesn't place people in that category. I'm kind of wondering if you replied to the correct comment...
I'm operating under the theory that living at home with mom in the 20s is essentially being drafted into MGTOW mostly involuntarily.
And when you're talking about large fraction of the college grad population living with parents, you have maybe 50:50 chance that your partner is also living at home with mom, so its not like you can have sex at her place in some other mom's basement instead of your own mom's basement.
I don't know if that's the case or not, not being in the situation, but in high school I managed to get naked with my girlfriend despite both of us living at home, and her not having a car. I can't imagine that adults can't find a way to have sex.
And I'm still not convinced that living at home post-college sends someone spiraling into MGTOW. They might be bitter about it, they might be resigned about it, but I don't believe that it necessarily leads to a rejection of the opposite sex. Big ol' [citation needed] there.
Just because you're not currently in a relationship, and it's difficult to maintain one, doesn't make you a MGTOW, no more than having a lease end a few days before a new one begins makes you homeless.
