There have been many posts, articles, and forum discussion about the mathematical link between how many previous partners a woman has had and the likelyhood that a marriage will end in divorce within 5 years. There are also graphs that show her likelyhood to cheat.
The correlation is stark – virgins are less likely to divorce or cheat, and the higher the partner count, the greater the risk for both.
The automatic conclusion for most men is therefore that for life satisfaction in an LTR, get a faithful woman. And to get a faithful woman, get a woman with the lowest partner count possible.
The thing that men who value lifetime commitment and purity will never be able to empathize with, is that some men don’t hold lifetime monogamy in as much esteem, and do hold sexual heat in a relationship in relatively higher esteem. The trade-off is worth it to them.
Those who value lifetime bonds also have a very difficult time with the fact that people have innate predispositions. Girls with lower libido are less likely to have many partners. Girls born and built with higher libido are more likely to have more partners. And girls with higher risk taking and novelty seeking propensities are more fun than their timid sisters.
I would choose a fun high infidelity risk hottie with overpowering sexual heat over a tepid hottie who would never possibly cheat every time.
And when we split up, I’d get another.
I’d much rather look back at a lifetime of 10 passionate and supercharged romances over a period of 20 years than one long easy low maintenance very secure tepid bland relationship of 20 years.
Adventurous women with high libidos have a higher infidelity risk. That suits me fine.
Rollo wrote an article about such statistics and I have to agree with his main point; how strongly a man registers to a woman changes how much she bonds with him.
It does happen that a girl can have fucked hundreds of guys and never even had an orgasm. Then she’ll meet some guy who she has incredible chemistry with, and becomes a never ending Niagra Falls of cum. To her that will be the first lover she ever had. She’ll say I love you 50 times a day and talk of how if you die she’ll never fuck another person.
That happened to me a few years ago, but the girl died on me. But I’ve had other experiences that were in the same category, with a girl being with other guys after me but still routinely letting me know that for her there is no other man in the world except for me. Years after breaking up, and years after her being with many guys.
As Rollo says, all numbers are not equal. Girls don’t just hop from this penis to that penis. They hop from one level of intensity to the other. The greatest intensity and connection is not equal to the others. Men are not equal.
Women are not equal, and men are not equal. We are not all just another digit. Some men count more.
And here is what I believe is natures evil little twist: the men who are most likely to want secure lifetime commitment are the same men that are least likely to be that guy who eclipses all other experiences before or after.
This is why the security men place such a high value on fidelity. Because they do not want to compete in the sexual marketplace.
They want to compete in a marketplace of fidelity.
I don’t think a lot of fidelity fears are so much marketplace insecurity, as they are not wanting to be stuck as provider for another man’s spawn.
There are many practical issues. Divorce rape, cuckolding, the emotional pain of being cheated on, the emotional comfort that comes from the idea of a secure shared future, the easing of anxiety about not having to worry about sexual competitors.
There are many great reasons to prefer a non-adventurous, risk averse, novelty averse, low libido woman for a mate.
However for some men these great reasons are outweighed by the benefits that come with the girl being fun (novelty seeking and risk taking) and having a very powerful libido.
It will always be a trade off. You can’t have an amphibious high speed supertanker airplane-boat. You don’t get 21 year old virgins who aren’t hung up home schooled religious wackos unless they innately are not much interested in fucking.
Or they want to raise a family, and be there as a father.
You have a point there. For men who want to live with their children until maturity, being with a woman holds an entirely different dimension of purpose.
However I argue that these men often conflate relationship with parenting, and will even compete against the bad boys for girlfriends on the basis of their fidelity.
Women vote with their feet, and even though their mouths complain, in their prime they are not valuing fidelity over edge. They prefer to cry for that bad boy than settle with the good boy.
The way of the walrus is more attractive than the way of the penguin.
Penguins confuse raising kids with having a relationship based on attraction.
Nowadays relationships and even marriage are not about the kids. They are about attraction.
Virginity is not a guarantee of fidelity, but it is very highly correlated”
It’s also quite rare to marry as a virgin, isn’t it?
Those women who wait are a self selected group who already have innate predispositions.
If you just take any random virgin, there is no correlation between starting an ltr with her and her propensity to go on and fuck a small village of other boys.
We’re talking about marrying when you are a virgin. Or marrying at a very low partner count. Who does that? Virgins are scarce by the time they are marrying age, and of those, few wait for marriage.
It’s a rare group of lower than average libido and risk taking women who in this culture and economic environment bother to not fuck when they can, and instead wait for something as extreme as marriage. Marriage, for fucks sake! Or should I say for the sake of the children.
The type of girl who does that is secure because she’s boring and will stop fucking you after the first baby is born.
In the same way you wouldn´t try to fix your pc components with a wrench, you wouldn´t want a self-confessed whore to birth your children
Yes, there was a time when children were a prime consideration in marriage for women in their prime. Women in their prime also married for financial or political reasons, either their own or of their parents.
Nowadays it is men in their prime who would like to trade their fidelity for sex and lifetime commitment, but not women. Attractive women in their prime largely marry out of attraction. It’s more likely to be the uglier or older girls that would consider practical concerns, such as lifetime provisioning or a lifetime father around for the children.
Contrary from what you’d expect from the low partner count stats, young newlyweds divorce at a higher rate than those who marry when older. This is because low partner count women of marrying age are a minority of women who are either ugly with few options or timid hyposexual freaks. Their numbers are too small to even balance out the stability of marriage that comes with age.
I hear you that for marriage purposes, there are many advantages to choosing a risk averse, non-novelty seeking, low libido woman, because if you don’t, you will be getting involved with a woman who is a high infidelity risk.
A low socio-sexual score man would be wise to choose a timid girl with below average interest in fucking.
But a high libido man who wants a partner in crime to do all sorts of fun and wild stuff will never be able to find his flying supertanker. He’ll have to do his best to alpha up and keep the woman through maintaining attraction. He won’t be able to keep her “for the kids”, like he might a lower socio-sexual predispositioned woman.
Key concepts: 1)predispositions of the woman 2) choosing which traits you want to give up in order to have the flip side valuable ones 3) betas often have a lower socio-sexual score (interest in variety) than does the average women, and are very easily fooled by womens words 4) in todays economy, women don’t need a lifetime partner for the children. A higher libido woman AND a woman in her prime is likely to stay only for the reason of attraction – not for the kids.
And the final concept to take away from this long post: most men stop having much or even any sex with their wives after the first kid is born. That is less likely to happen if you choose a high libido, and therefore higher infidelity risk woman.
Update: Below is the updated chart that shows likelihood of marriage failure for newlyweds based on number of partners. In the discussion of the stats it is mentioned that there is a greater chance for failure if the couple had sex before marriage, implying that it is religious reasons for waiting for sex that is a stabilizing factor in many virgin marriages, not a factor of ability to bond. Note also the U shape of this updated graph – marrying a young hottie who has had few partners can be greater risk than marrying a more experienced woman. This is likely because as women get older, they get more partners, and older women are less likely to divorce, as they have fewer options in the marriage market to turn to.
I’d like to see graphs for partner counts related to other factors, such as ugliness, libido, and religiosity. And we need a graph that shows the average number of times per week the couple is having sex at years 1,2,3,4 and 5. If we had that information I think we’ll find that women with lower partner counts have serious deficits as marriage material.
From socialpathology.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/promiscuity-data-guest-post.html
asdf said:
Or they want to raise a family, and be there as a father.
“And when we divorced, I’d get another.”
Only works without kids, and with a big enough bankroll to handle it (you may not experience alimony/child support in your country?).
I agree with your logic more generally.
xsplat said:
You have a point there. For men who want to live with their children until maturity, being with a woman holds an entirely different dimension of purpose.
However I argue that these men often conflate relationship with parenting, and will even compete against the bad boys for girlfriends on the basis of their fidelity.
Women vote with their feet, and even though their mouths complain, in their prime they are not valuing fidelity over edge. They prefer to cry for that bad boy than settle with the good boy.
The way of the walrus is more attractive than the way of the penguin.
Penguins confuse raising kids with having a relationship based on attraction.
Nowadays relationships and even marriage are not about the kids. They are about attraction.
dailysatanist said:
The way of the walrus: to die a virgin.
http://edge.org/response-detail/2880/what-is-your-favorite-deep-elegant-or-beautiful-explanation
xsplat said:
That’s true – most walruses are beta males who don’t breed. The metaphor for the way of the walrus as it relates to human mating strategies is meant to connote the strategies used by the successful males with many women.
It’s true that the beta male strategy is more likely to get at least some pussy for most men. Or in our metaphor, we say that all penguins choose a high investment strategy and all penguins mate.
However nowadays most men will have better luck with women in their prime if they learn game – if they learn the ways of alpha male. If they learn the ways of the man who can date many women concurrently. The man with options who displays his command. Nowadays women are less responsive to signals of fidelity and provisioning when they are in their prime, and more responsive to caddish high socio-sexual behavior.
There used to be a huge risk in being an alpha male human. Your competitors would kill you.
We don’t really have that risk anymore.
So really, the strategy is all reward, no risk now.
So even though most walruses within a 100% walrus society don’t mate, in our mixed society of walruses and penguins, now that there is no real risk in being a walrus, all beta penguins who learn walrus ways will increase their mating opportunities.
And since this is mathematically the case, moral questions will not enter into the picture of which strategy will start to grow. We can predict with mathematical certainty that the percentage of males with a with genetic predisposition to lower investment cad sexual strategies will increase, for as long as technological conditions remain similar to as they are today. Technology of course giving rise to our current culture – for example the technologies of birth control, industrial revolutions and service economies which free women from individual economic reliance on a mate and give rise to anonymous urban living, etc.
The era of the cad is only at its beginning. Our numbers are certain to grow.
Solo said:
A woman whose had a lot of sexual male partners will find it hard to emotionally connect if most of her relationships have been just “Pump N dumps”. Women like that have issues which need to be address on a professional therapist/spiritual counselor etc
“Nowadays relationships and even marriage are not about the kids. They are about attraction.”
This is why divorces are 50%, this quote sums up society right now at it’s finest. Everyone is disposable everybody!. People marry because of attraction and status and not love and family. Just look at the crap that’s glorified on television. Jersey Shore, Teen mom, Basketball wives, The Kardishians. This is what young women and men are watching. It’s filth
I would love to see those “stats” that you speak of young newlyweds divorce rates being higher then older divorce rates
Thanks
Solo
xsplat said:
You view the cause of culture as cultural, but consider that there may be another cause. Technology gives different options.
Are people more motivated by opportunity, or by culture? It seems to me that young men and women are more likely to follow opportunity than to do even what their parents and peer group tells them they should. Technology has altered what are the opportunities in the sexual marketplace.
It used to be that sex was coupled with pregnancy. Women did not have the opportunity for casual sex without consequence. It used to be that having a baby came with a need for a lifetime provider. Technology has allowed for an economy in which the woman can earn her own money. Or she can just get an abortion. Or the state (which grew out of industrial organization) can provide.
Back when farming was invented, culture quickly adapted to the new opportunities that this provided. The same thing happened during the industrial revolution. Culture is not just a gossipy group agreement; it is an adaptation to what people are ALREADY doing. People are going to do what they do regardless of culture. Culture is just an explanation after the fact to describe what people are already doing.
The reasons that people do what they do are not because of the after the fact explanations. The reasons are technological.
As for the stats that younger women divorce at higher rates, they’ve been mentioned on the heartiste site and the rationalmale site. Heartiste did a post where he attributes the fact of younger women divorcing more to the fact they they have greater opportunities at that age. Women who are closer to the wall realize they’d just better shut their mouths and keep the offer they already have.
Again – culture is not about right and wrong. It’s simply about opportunity.
As evidence that it isn’t culture that causes culture, but it is technology, look at how very different cultures all across the globe have reacted to the introductions of the birth control pill and the service economy. You’ll see the same progressions of changes that the west has gone through.
Even strict Muslim teenage girls in coconut grove villages in Indonesia are now on the pill and playing with more than their boyfriends fingers. And using the internet to hunt for a rich boyfriend.
The Man Who Was . . . said:
It’s also quite rare to marry as a virgin, isn’t it?
10% of the female population in NA are virgins when they get married.
You don’t get 21 year old virgins who aren’t hung up home schooled religious wackos unless they innately are not much interested in fucking.
All else being equal this is true. But things are not always equal.
Also, religious girls aren’t necessarily hung up about sex.
The Man Who Was . . . said:
We can predict with mathematical certainty that the percentage of males with a with genetic predisposition to lower investment cad sexual strategies will increase, for as long as technological conditions remain similar to as they are today.
No, birth control is the game changer. Men with high partner counts are having vastly less children than men with low counts. The former are making gains among the bottom 50%, but even there they haven’t caught up.
Kerimil said:
provided they are really the fathers not providers
The Man Who Was . . . said:
Agree though about the tradeoff between the two types of girl.
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sploosh said:
Hi xsplat,
New fan of the blog here; i find what you’re doing a refreshing break from the at-times caustic / soul-killing environment elsewhere in the manosphere.
Some thoughts on these issues, let me know how they strike you:
To me this graph suggests mainly that, all other things being equal, virgins are a good bet for marriage if fidelity is your main or sole criterion. but, as you’ve noted, all things are almost never equal, and the low divorce rate is likely at least partly an artifact of religious observance and/or low libido.
The enormous spike at 2 partners is probably a function of very young marriages, which are well established to be more likely to fail. there does seem to be a bit of an uptick once the partner count gets above 21, but the effect isn’t so enormous as a lot of reactionaries in the manosphere would have it seem. part of the effect probably correlates with personality traits that might more reliably code for divorce (low agreeableness, low conscientiousness, high extraversion / sensation-seeking, etc). but it looks like an n-count anywhere between 3-20 makes little difference in the chances of divorce.
It seems to me that a lot of the n-count obsession in the manosphere is driven by (mostly right-leaning carriers) of the purity gene who are less concerned with a supposed increased risk in divorce or infidelity, per se, than they are by the disgust they feel at the idea of a woman having taken a lot of cocks (or any other cocks)-the most extreme example being so-cons who wouldn’t consider marrying a girl with an n count of 1.
Granted that many of these people will allow that correlation /= causation, there’s a tendency out there grab at evidence that would purport to show that a higher n-count (in women) causes divorce / infidelity, in order to find a rational justification for what is, essentially, a gut reflex that not all men share, or at least not to the same degree.
lack of purity gene / weak disgust reflex will not be as instinctively put off by partner count (or may be able to tolerate a higher n).
One more thing about the purity gene–you mention elsewhere on the blog that someone with a sociosexual score and without a strong disgust reflex will tend towards caddishness, while a guy with low scores on both will towards so-con style dad / K-selection. I think it’s important to note, though, that it doesn’t seem like these traits are in any way coupled. Thus it’d be perfectly possible to have, say a low or medium disgust reflex and a low or medium sociosexual score.
Someone like this might spend their 20s playing the field in the usual way (or to the best of their abilities), then decide in their 30s they want commitment / stability / kids, etc., and likely pair off with a woman similarly situated. i would imagine that guys like this would bond comfortably with a woman with a higher n-count than a purity gene carrier would likely tolerate–not having a strong disgust reflex complicating other factors feeding in to an evaluation of the woman’s cheating risk. I think this is what a lot of (beta) guys look like.
You can be alpha or beta (sociosexual score) with or without disgust; depending on what corner of the manosphere you’re snooping around in, you might come away with the impression that relative non-chalance RE: n-count was or non-existent in men, or that it was the sole the province of betas.
xsplat said:
Agreed and I appreciate the thoughtful comment. But I didn’t quite parse the last paragraph.
Sploosh said:
Right, typed that quickly. I mean that it’s possible to be “alpha” and lack a disgust reflex, i.e. there’s nothing “alpha” in itself about disdain for sluts / undue concern for n-count.
Sploosh said:
Insofar as “alpha” means “high sociosexual score.”
xsplat said:
Ya. The thing with genetically encoded moral traits is that they don’t FEEL genetically encoded. So people with the stronger disgust reflex consider those without it morally inferior, even after the genetic explanation is offered.
I agree that you can have a high social ranking and even sociosexual score and still have the genes that encode for a heightened sense of moral purity. Or not have them.
I see that the moral purity thing is an extremely emotional response that highjacks all reason, and so purity discussions are usually not in line with how I like to think. Purity discussions by purity moralists are all gut feeling, couched in reason.
Sploosh said:
“I see that the moral purity thing is an extremely emotional response that highjacks all reason, and so purity discussions are usually not in line with how I like to think. Purity discussions by purity moralists are all gut feeling, couched in reason.”
Right–and I suspect a lot of this kind of thing gets exaggerated in the manosphere, insofar as the manosphere tends to attract a right-leaning crowd.
Some other related thoughts:
Low sociosexual score + purity gene would seem to be the worst option for men in the current age, insofar as the average woman (average libido etc.) is almost certainly going to have a high-ish n-count by the time she reaches marrying age. You might try to get them young, but as the chart above shows, that creates it’s own (statistically more severe) problems.
A guy with a low-ish sociosexual score and lack of the purity gene would seem to be better off, insofar as his disgust reflex isn’t unnecessarily limiting his options. I think a lot of average guys fall into this category.
It seems like a woman of marrying age with an n-count on the right-ish side of the distribution might be a better bet in a lot of ways, insofar as it would be a compromise between normal libido and and the protective effect of age (probably as a result of a woman’s declining SMV value once she gets into her 30s)–she’d have a normal libido but less hypergamous pressure to trade-up.
Two other thoughts:
It seems like someone with a low-ish sociosexual score and a low disgust reflex stands to gain the most from LTR-game (in the context of say, a marriage). I’d also imagine that weak LTR-game on the man’s part accounts for a huge percentage of female-initiated divorces and marital infidelity.
It might also be worth de-coupling sociosexual score from libido–I think there are guys with low socio-sexual scores who nevertheless have high libidos and consider it important that they be able to have a lot of sex with their wife (Athol Kay, for instance).
Sploosh said:
Also, for a more accurate sense of the risk associated with marrying a woman with low libido, see:
http://www.reddit.com/r/DeadBedrooms
xsplat said:
Ya, I find it strange that in discussions of infidelity risk that this is never brought up. And then when I bring it up it is loudly ignored.
It’s annoying how brains are wired, when they are wired to think emotionally. You just can’t reason with an emotional position. But I’d think that not getting laid is also an emotional position, so the two emotions should at least be able to battle it out.
Doesn’t seem to work that way though.
Those who are disgusted by high partner count have that fact drown out all others in their consciousness, until it’s all they are able to focus on.
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