Responding to the title: they get their dopamine and serotonin from smartphones x sex has become more risky (than it already was, heh -- STDs and pregnancy / child support) especially reputationally risky with revenge porn and fake rape accusations amplified by social media x 'woke' conflict around consent x pandemic?
Aha: Yes, probably. And then they used just a single newline between paragraphs, which got eaten by the posting function. Took me too a while to learn to make paragraph breaks two newlines.
Lack of eye contact. That's what I see among both sexes under the age of 30. Almost to the level of autism. An inability to have basic conversation. And the boys are totally ineffectual and terrified of trying to kiss a girl; it's been made faux pas to show any inclination. It's hard enough as a teenager to get up the courage to kiss a girl. Imagine if you think there's a 50/50 chance she'll completely destroy your life on social media, rather than just say "no thanks".
In my mid-30s I ran through a spate of recent divorcees who all had almost exactly the same complaint. Their husband of 10 years hadn't slept with them in 5+ years, and was always in the basement playing video games or watching porn. Which he didn't want to watch with her. Two of them - totally separately - told me they would dress up in lingere and go to the basement and the husband would say he was too tired. A third said she felt "unfuckable" and started crying recounting it. (I said, oh no! You're totally fuckable! I also said, I would never play a video game rather than lay in bed with you. And it was like... holy shit) This is literally what's going on.
> We make it work and have sex a few times every month
That’s not very much at all. Some of us are daily+ kind of people (and yes we have hard jobs that make a lot of money, too). Hope your wife is satisfied with this arrangement.
I know someone - a relative of my wife - with 3 young kids that has sex (more or less) daily. She wasn’t bragging when she told me. To be fair, she has a smoking body. The other half, not so much.
My wife and I just have one 4 month old but we’re making an effort to have sex the days that we can. It’s not easy with a kid at this age! We maybe get one nap in the evening. After the baby goes to bed my wife usually needs to pump and get to sleep early enough so she gets enough before the baby wakes.
I guess it depends on the kids. Some of them cry more, involve more energy, wake up earlier. When going to bed you remember the morning pain and quickly evaluate the pleasure component. Moreover, both partners need to have equally high energy levels in order to do that, and this can be a challenge even in a relationship without kids. So respect to those who manage to do it daily with 3.
Exactly! This is a personal preference thing but I don't think folks realize how often some of us _have to_ make love to maintain sanity. They are often quickies due to the kids but we both strive to make it happen because we like it so much.
Having Sex more than once a week 15 years into a relationship with 3 kids running around is not alot? I bed to differ. I think for most that would be more than they are currently do.
Having sex daily is a young couple fantasy, and really at this point just waiting time.
Time is the one thing we dont have. If Im not feelin it, and the wife isn't feeling it. I'm not going to force it. And If I want it, and she dont. Rubbing one off out in my office quick after the kids are in bed is no big deal.
Cops can earn a good amount, and can move up. But lets be honest this is not a game every cop has the option to do. only so many upper management positions. same with a teacher.
All I meant by it is making six figures by the time you turn 30 is not as easy as a task.
Sex is a process, its the foreplay and the physical goodness.
Yeah of course it is fun, and makes your body hurt the next day.
But it is a process, and spending 30 minuets to do something I can rub out in a few minuets isn't always worth it. I am tired, and rest is not an option.
Even when you go on vacation, you are not resting. You are working to allow your kids to have fun. You come home more tired than when you left.
Yeah sexy is fun, and easy. when the time is right. Who has time these days. Time is the one thing I wish I had more of every day.
You buy a house cheap. Your wages go up cause wages have been going up for a lot of industries (due to cost of housing and competition). You don't have to work as hard because your mortgage stayed the same. You can keep the same job or work less hours.
It's happening all around me in SV. Many owners who bought below $1m basically retiring early because they started making $300-500K/yr for the last few years and now are FIRE'd thanks to the incredible wage growth while they locked in a much lower COL than people who had to buy 10 years later.
Here's the fun part - we aren't expecting your standard senior IC to be making 7 figures in the next few years but that's what it'd take to be comparable to the wage growth that we've seen in SV in the last decade along with housing prices.
Cops are a low wage job that struggles to move up in life? Dude...sure there are guys that stay on the beat their whole 30 years but there is ample opportunity within any large city organization to specialize and move up into quite well paid (by any measure other than HN's tech salaries) professionals. Even the ones that don't still usually do ample overtime to increase their take home pay to levels unattainable by large swaths of white collar American workers.
Keep in mind there is no 'the police' in the US there are like 10K different jurisdictions all doing their own thing and a little 2K person town with one sheriff and two deputies will function much different from the NYC police department.
When it comes to your kids, everyone should want to set them up for life.
My goal even from a young age before kids was to build generational wealth.
We live in a world where money makes a big difference in lifestyle.
Living Paycheck to Paycheck is a shitty way to live life. I did plenty of that early in life, and grew up in a house hold that lived paycheck to paycheck. I don't want that for my kids.
You could be the King of England for all I care, if your relationship with your wife depends on how much you make compared to her, you have a lot (a lot!) of soul searching to do.
It's also "if your wife's relationship with you depends on how much she makes compared with you she has a lot of soul searching to do."
Historically women have married up in status. They still have that preference but that preference is not realistic now that more women are rising up higher in the workforce.
Actually me and my wife are both 6 figure earners. I used a common example for young couples where the wife normally earns half if not less than their partner. And while there was a time in my life this was the case, my wife makes close to what I make. And we love each other. But with kids and day to day activities, there isn't enough time in the day. You'd be surprised how much you don't even feel the need for sex when you have so much other enjoyment in life.
Between us working hard so we can retire early in life, we could stop working at the age of 45 if we wanted and our investments would still grow while living off them, I have plenty of enjoyment at home after work. I love cooking, I love engineering and wooding in my shop, I love playing video games, I love programming small little gadgets, I love to learn. Hell I even love to catch up on a TV show with the Wife, or play some Mario Party as a family.
We're in bed by 10 most nights, and I'm up before 6. Me and the Wife don't need to have sex every night. Sure that was a thing years ago, but 15 years in once a week makes up happy.
I get more enjoyment teaching my daughter how to design and build something from start to finish, or playing some Minecraft with my Boys. Making Something for dinner we've never had, etc. My priorates are in the correct space.
> When it comes to your kids, everyone should want to set them up for life.
Sure, but there are things that kids need a lot more than money. Like a parent who is present and enjoys life, not always working and always exhausted. Also, kids are profoundly affected by the level of warmth or intimacy between their parents. If you feel too tired to enjoy sex with your wife, it is probably leaking into other areas as well.
I strongly disagree with this. Setting them up for life is actually setting them up for failure. The great thing is every family gets to make their own choices!
My parents are millionaires and they havent given me anything post undergraduate. There were times I was desperate for money (e.g. to make payroll) and they wouldnt bend. They said you will find a way and be a stronger person for it. They were right.
My whole life I knew that all my parents' money was going to my disabled brother and so I haven't planned for it and am fine.
True happiness comes from within, not from material goods (beyond basic food and shelter).
What my parents did give me were the tools and education to know how to not live paycheck to paycheck. It doesnt matter how much money you make, it matters how much you save. When I was in grad school (90s) I made about 12K/year and saved about 2K/year. I did get myself into credit card trouble early on but dug myself out and then had a surplus.
> My parents are millionaires and they havent given me anything post undergraduate.
So they gave you everything until you were basically 22? Do you even realize how much of your life they've set up for you?
Generational wealth is mostly irrelevant for most kids anyway. They're not getting the wealth until the parents die (Parents tend to die when kids are in their 50s). The grandchildren will receive it much sooner than the parents will (in terms of relative position to their birth).
> The data does not back that assertion up, at all.
Median home prices are accelerating in their annual price increase with a significant uptrend beginning on the mid- to late '90s. This represents a significant percentage of personal budgets, and those who are on the margins will be pushed out without increasing their income.
It is an assertion on your part that there is no data.
You made the assertion that people are working more now leading to them being too exhausted for sex, which is false. Your reply then switched to increasing housing prices, not hours worked. Average hours worked have not gone up - https://clockify.me/working-hours
I don't know why this post should've been flagged. It's a valid viewpoint and a reasonable explanation.
FWIW the idea of jerking off while your SO hangs out smoking weed and playing a video game is ...pretty alien and crazy to me. But I've been in mostly very long relationships and I do understand the ennui.
> Lack of eye contact. That's what I see among both sexes under the age of 30.
Not a significant thing
> An inability to have basic conversation.
Not a significant thing
> And the boys are totally ineffectual and terrified of trying to kiss a girl; it's been made faux pas to show any inclination. It's hard enough as a teenager to get up the courage to kiss a girl.
I mean you shouldn't kiss a girl without consent, but I assure you, plenty of teenagers are kissing
> Imagine if you think there's a 50/50 chance she'll completely destroy your life on social media, rather than just say "no thanks".
It's really not a thing. This one is just stupid. This time of thinking is OCD level anxiety of about unrealistic outcomes.
> In my mid-30s I ran through a spate of recent divorcees who all had almost exactly the same complaint. Their husband of 10 years hadn't slept with them in 5+ years, and was always in the basement playing video games or watching porn. Which he didn't want to watch with her. Two of them - totally separately - told me they would dress up in lingere and go to the basement and the husband would say he was too tired. A third said she felt "unfuckable" and started crying recounting it. (I said, oh no! You're totally fuckable! I also said, I would never play a video game rather than lay in bed with you. And it was like... holy shit) This is literally what's going on.
As a late 20's, moderately sexed, east coaster, the quote here is weird, dude. Both the content and the fact that it's being shared at all. People being depressed and having low sex drives and maybe just not liking their wives is bad and definitely a thing. Guys who can't comprehend not prioritizing sex as the top item at all times is also weird. I don't have interest in fucking more than maybe 3 times per week on a good week. Other than that and I would almost certainly prefer playing a game with my wife.
What's the use of just saying it's not a thing? Make a point.
I agree with OP. People around my generation (middle of the road millennial) and especially those younger have laughable basic social skills. The median 25-year-old can't talk on the phone, walk up to someone at a party and start a conversation, or act like a human being with a cashier or server. They also flake out on plans some huge percentage of the time. Drugs, porn, games, and social media are preferred to face-to-face interaction. Normal interactions, which are obviously often slightly awkward, are "cringe," and obsession with them produces a neurotic paranoia in daily interactions. And then we wonder why there's a mental health crisis, and why our communities are disintegrating, or why no one trusts society or one another.
> What's the use of just saying it's not a thing? Make a point.
The point is that social skills - properly understood - are learnable and developable skills, and adapt creatively to changes in social norms. It's not for bad reasons that "trying to kiss a girl" has become so cringe. Why are you trying to do something that intimate when you have no clue how the other person will react? It makes no sense. Work around all that crap instead, focus on being attractive on your own terms and on showing off the best side of yourself in ways that are not inherently threatening if the other person doesn't like it. Plenty of creative possibilities there. The rest will follow if you do it right. If it turns out that she expects you to take risks you're not comfortable with (which is the only reason anyone ever could have thought that the cringe thing made any sense at all), that's her loss not yours. Even then you can still be friendly, and maybe she'll change her mind after all.
>> It's not for bad reasons that "trying to kiss a girl" has become so cringe.
Oh cringe, is it? I'd say your generation cringing at the thought gets directly to the reason it has no sex.
>> Why are you trying to do something that intimate when you have no clue how the other person will react?
Possibly precisely because you don't know how they'll react. Whoa, crazy right? You might initiate something without prior consent and see what happens? Holy fuck!
You aren't trying to do anything against someone's will. You aren't going to kiss the girl unless she wants to kiss you. But when you're 15 years old and you go on a first date, you do already know you'd like to kiss that girl. And you also know she isn't going to kiss you first.
It takes risk. No you don't take that risk if you think the girl doesn't like you, but it's still scary and risky all the same if you think she does. Having no clue how she's gonna react and taking a leap -- that's what you need to do to learn, both ways, to grow up. A lot of the problem with men not respecting women is down to men not learning when they aren't invited for a kiss.
But ya can't learn until you've tried. And when you're 15, trying to kiss a girl you like is pretty much the most important thing on earth. And if you don't know that, never experienced it or don't remember it, all I can say is I feel sorry for you. If you ever go on a date and carry through for a couple hours - and you're still interested, without thinking "how should I kiss that girl"? Then you're missing one of the better parts of life.
In any case, intellectualizing it to the point of obliterating all unplanned activity in the name of policing everyone's behavior and telling them they're dirty or wrong for kissing strangers is a victorian, petit bourgeois fascist little conceit which like most of your generation's ill-formed ideas will be trodden over by your children who are gonna go hog-wild fuckin' every cock in sight in return for your closed-minded, terrified little incel ideas about life.
> What's the use of just saying it's not a thing? Make a point.
My point is that your anecdata is garbage. Older folks saying young people don't know how to communicate is a centuries old trope.
Most people can communicate just fine. Given that you are citing people flaking, one might assume that the traits you're applying to an entire generation of individuals may just be your shitty friends. Little bubbles at the top of reddit don't matter either.
Congrats on finally being old enough to start blaming the younger generations. Here's your tropey millennial participation trophy.
Many people aren't good at phone calls. You know why? Because they don't talk on the phone.
Your anecdotes don't carry any more water, and strongly expressing contempt doesn't make it more persuasive.
OP was offering a theory that more communication moving to media that transmits communication with less or no physical/verbal context might cause difficulties transitioning to intimate physical activity.
He has the stats on his side, so he is not trying to persuade us that there is a trend that requires an explanation in the first place.
I think you provided a good enough theory why it's okay that there isn't as much conventional sex happening; the next step is to see how it might not contradict his theory.
Yet another of your points that sucks, since it wasn't their "anecdata": You're replying to two different people.
> Older folks saying young people don't know how to communicate is a centuries old trope. [...] Most people can communicate just fine.
So you've missed all the myriad "I hardly ever answer when my phone rings, and never initiate any phone calls myself" comments in various threads here on HN?
> Many people aren't good at phone calls. You know why? Because they don't talk on the phone.
Yeah, exactly. Or perhaps the other way around: They don't dare talk on the phone because they know they suck at it.
So... Do you think all those "I never use my phone for actual phone calls" comments on here are made by oldsters much more than youngsters?
Well, to clarify, they weren't playing games with their wives... and we're talking about sexless periods of time stretching for years. Thrice a week would be perfectly alright and I'm sure some of these women would have settled for once a month.
Maybe sex isn't that great compared to new activities from a reward center perspective. Maybe the prevalence of circumcision in the US could explain why sex is less enticing than these other new activities.
Sex is the peak of human connectivity and intimacy. It is literally the reason you are here today.
If you aren't good at sex or have bad sex, practice. That includes becoming physically fit to increase your stamina and strength during sex with your partner.
> Sex is the peak of human connectivity and intimacy.
This philosophy is a recipe for a disastrous relationship. Every single person I've ever talked to in a long-running successful marriage has told me that sex is not a substitute for emotional intimacy, and that emotional intimacy is the core of their marriage that survives even as they age and even as they start to have sex less.
From my perspective and direct experience, it’s widespread porn use, which has extremely detrimental effects on your dopamine system, which leads to something you might term ‘lack of charisma, confidence and vital energy’, which leads to less people having sex due to confidence/charisma issues and lack of any drive.
By my experience and observation, porn is really bad for oneself, and it’s really addicting. I’m a millennial male, and at some point, all four of us in my friend group realized and mentioned we are addicted to porn.
I still have addiction issues, but I’ve managed to reduce my use on average to once every 2-4 weeks from 4-5+ times a week, and the benefits to my entire life and being have been immense immense immense.
Do you feel like porn prevented you from meeting people in the first place, or just made you not as satisfied with what relationships you had? As also a millenial dude, I definitely have gone through cycles of watching it alot, but always just in the times in between being in a relationship (or in college, just sleeping around in general).
I definitely believe you, and well aware you are not alone in the peergroup, I just personally can't imagine my relationship to porn ever winning out over real sex. Even bad sex is better than the best porn.
That's overly complicated. You can't look at someone and say "Yep, he watches porn." It's more likely people satiate their primitive needs with porn, and realise they don't need all the emotional extras/burdens with relationships.
This has no backing in actual science (regardless of what the cult-like communities on reddit and similar places claim). I think a lot of people misattribute many of their problems to porn because (1) they watch porn and (2) they have some serious life problems. But that doesn't mean that (1) causes (2).
I would be surprised if the scientific mechanisms behind this aren’t discovered within the next 10 years, due to the prevalence of this issue (if what you’re saying is indeed true that this has no current backing in science).
If you’re a porn user, I would suggest that you give it a try and observe what happens in your direct experience. Take a break from porn and masturbation. I think that if your discernment is subtle and sensitive enough, you will definitely notice something. What’s the harm in a fun little experiment?
Sometimes, science lags behind a bit on describing and explaining the phenomena of this universe. This doesn’t invalidate the occurrence of the phenomena themselves or make them inexistent. Sometimes, science just needs a bit more time to catch up, and improve its sophistication and paradigms.
There are studies about what abstinence does to hormones. At day seven there is a peak of testosterone then it drops back.
What would the science explain? that people like sexual activity, alone or with partner? that's not exactly new. A habit becomes a problem when it is compulsive. This is rare. It's also not an entirely new situation. For most of history prostitution was widely available, even state-regulated for low prices in cases. But it s not like they all became sex addicts, it was rare.
> Sometimes, science lags behind a bit on describing and explaining the phenomena of this universe.
And porn has only been ubiquitous and effortlessly available for what, maybe a decade or two. It stands to reason that the scientific examination of the consequences is not completed yet.
I watch at least as much porn as the next guy, and have multiple partners on a regular basis. But I don't tend to get addicted to anything, so I might be a bad example.
Not meeting people anymore, because of the pandemic, had a much bigger impact for me. I never was particular successful with dating apps, real-life worked magnitides better.
Well, this is only in the context of courtship, which is _inherently_ sexually polarizing. You most _definitely should not_ bring this view into the work place. In that case you are in your right to call is misogynistic.
And this comment is also a prime example of the derailment that leads to the vanilla meeting between the genders.
(I expect people to be able the read "masculine core" for men and "feminine core" for women)
This feels like a rather uncharitable interpretation. Entering into in an exclusive relationship with someone means you have come out ahead of other potential "competitors" and are able to claim the reward: access to the elevated relationship with the said individual, and not necessarily the individual themselves.
Do you also take issue with the phrases like "How to win his heart" or "You need to win her over"?
> the added energy will definitely also make men more willing to do the hunt
Perhaps it is you with your interpretation that is misogynistic. The person was writing focusing on men, but both men and women are on the hunt for a compatible partner with which they could build a fulfilling relationship.
In my last long-term relationship, in the first year I stopped using porn completely as I was completely satisfied with sex. As time went on sex with the same partner becomes less exciting, even if you love them. By year 3 I found sometimes I would not be excited enough for fulfilling sex (I'm a mid-30s man). What I found was that watching porn improved this a lot. It made me excited again, but I still ejaculated exclusively into my partner. It wasn't that I would think about porn during sex or anything either. It just caused me to see her in a different light somehow. But if I got carried away and ejaculated while watching porn it was over for at least 2-3 days. Completely dead sex drive. So yeah, I've come to agree that it's ejaculating while watching porn that is the real bad thing. Porn itself I think can be bad too, but for other reasons.
My lack of drive in life comes from the disillusionment of the idea that life is a meritocracy. Get screwed over enough and eventually you realize it's all BS.
> widespread porn use, which has extremely detrimental effects on your dopamine system
Is this not begging the question? A cursory glance through pubmed doesn't show evidence for this.
If you were to say you did most other tasks four to five times a week you would call it a habit and not an addiction.
Certainly compulsive sexual behavior, hypersexuality disorder, and sexual addiction have many hits in pubmed but the requirements seem to require significant negative impacts on one's life and not the actions themselves (or necessarily even the frequency) as the issue.[1]
The same things have been said about cars, music, movies, the internet etc. People make their choice and choose porn or anything else. Chasing sex for pleasure never made a lot of sense evolutionary but there was in past decades a lot of social pressure to be seen as sexually successful. People are rejecting that and don't feel ashamed for it anymore
But not from a scientific perspective. ... But go on, go on...
> it’s widespread porn use, which has extremely detrimental effects on your dopamine system, which leads to something you might term ‘lack of charisma, confidence and vital energy’, which leads to less people having sex due to confidence/charisma issues and lack of any drive.
Your perspective is wrong and your individual direct experience means nothing and cannot be generalised to others. If you (and your pear group) decide porn is bad for you and you don't watch it anymore, that's your perfectly fine decision -- no one forces porn on you! But do not generalise, please.
Say: 'I was an addict and porn was bad for me.'
Do not say: 'porn is highly addictive and bad.'
Porn is quite unlike alcohol. More like chocolate, maybe, but don't cite me on that.
I don't know if it causes people to have less sex. However, I do agree it could be a slippery slope to addiction. I stopped watching a week or two ago and I have urges daily. Can't say for sure this is real addiction but it definitely could lead there for many.
Anybody who has taken a long break from porn can back this up 100%, and it's obvious when you think about it. How sexually motivated are you after release, and the fact that porn makes it easy and free and low effort will obviously have an impact on that motivation to put in the effort.
If I could give 2 pieces of advice to all young people (men in particular) it would be to stay off dating apps and leave the porn alone. Go talk to women in real life, as long as you're not trying to get laid with a 30 second conversation you can build those connections up over time and you'll see the difference it makes.
What is worse than porn addiction is an active social stigma against those standing up against it. Subs like r/noporn have received a lot of criticism for their views and associations (usually religious orgs).
What is rarely talked about is that a lot of porn consumption is done by married men, which leads one to think that the problem is not changing morale norms amongst the youth, but in fact porn itself, better yet: instant access to free algorithmically formulated dopamine stimulation.
So what's the problem when people are not forced anymore to adhere to stupid social games, faking interest in other people, wasting a lot of time on something that in the end is just a couple of minutes of satifsfying a body function? Seems like a huge plus. Nobody is forced to live that way, and probably everybody else is better off with the two worlds separated.
I don't think they are suggesting that the reason is because humanity has evolved past our sexual desires. People still want it. They just aren't doing it.
I didn't either. The article mostly talks about porn as a substitute for sex to satisfy the desires, and that seems like a perfectly legitimate option.
It isn't the rituals. Poor people have done them in the past. I'm over 40 and have done very few of those silly rituals, thankfully. I don't wear a wedding ring either. "Mating rituals" are quite possible to do cheaply. "Come over and play this game with me, and we can cook some food"
It is, literally, living with one's parents. If I had to live with my parents, not only would I never be able to have sex in my own house, but I'd still - as an adult - have to lie about going to someone's house to have sex. I couldn't do the above example. No matter how old I am, my mother treats me as a child, generally with horrible sayings like, "my house, my rules" and the amount of contribution doesn't matter. As you might have guessed, my mother is conservative. My dad was too, while he was alive.
It's burying the lede to suggest that young people are having less sex. The salient fact is that it's young men who are skewing this average down.
Women, on average, are doing perfectly fine in the sexual marketplace, along with the top 10-15% of men.
edit: The above was my reflexive response to the headline. Now that I've actually read the article, I have to say that the article is very good and quite comprehensive, but it seems that it merely dances around the above issue in the "Tinder Mirage" subsection, but doesn't actually directly confront it. An unfortunate oversight.
I could care less. If someone wants to sleep around their entire life, so be it. But the idea the men are the ones that are more willing to sleep around was proven false years ago. Woman have always been more willing to sleep around than men.
Which is why articles like this always single out young males. Its not that they are unwilling to have sex. They simply just want to have a relationship with a single person.
Young Woman are more "Fuk Boi" than most Men. See only a small % of men really end up being "Fuk Boi" Material.
The rest either are financial loosers or work/family becomes their life. Do nothing more than work all day to bring home the big bucks, and spend the rest of their night with their kids and wife.
If you've ever read articles about Tinder and the whole random hookup culture, you'd know it is largely driven by a small % of men and a wider range of woman that are not looking for a relationship at all. And a large % of Men that fail to attract anything.
I found my soulmate early in life and have kids. Work is my life. I find this whole idea of not enough sex stupid. The real goal is and always has been making money. Jerk off and go back to grinding. Retire at 50. Have mid day sex then. Otherwise jerk off and stick to having sex at night before bed.
I’m having a tough time finding it, google isn’t helping. I’m hoping someone else remembers and knows where it is. I distinctly remember seeing it, it was posted to a group chat so maybe doctored but that’s unlikely.
Edit: found it; institute of family studies 2022 of no sex in the past 5 years for under 35 year olds.
Do you have a source for this claim? Specifically that women aren't having less sex too, and that the decline is almost entirely due to men. It's very possible for women to be more selective than in the past, and also everyone being less promiscuous overall.
I read the chart as indicating a jump from ~15% to 28% of men 18-30 not having sex, and women from ~13% to 18%. So perhaps the simultaneous rise could be due to factors like less promiscuity overall or more selectivity, but I find that GP's reasoning is plausible for explaining why sexlessness in men rose higher and faster than that in women.
Can you elaborate? This particular comment of yours reads to me as agreeing -- as in agreeing that selectivity accounts for some of the decrease in sex, but not all, which I think is what I stated.
Your other comment in this overall thread gives me the impression that you actually disagree though, so I think I'm missing something and would appreciate more explanation.
No, I agree. My other comment was limited the context of talking about that data only (that 80 percent of women fight over 20% of the men on data sites), not your data. You have promiscuity rates separated by sex, and changes of them over time. The other comment doesn't, and only taking the other comment's data by itself isn't enough, imo, to draw any meaningful conclusions.
Can't speak for the quantity, but didn't the big analysis from OKCupid determine that 80% of women are fighting over the top 20% of men? The data was published in a book called Dataclysm by Christian Rudder.
Right, this speaks to women being more selective than in the past, but says nothing in either direction about promiscuity levels overall. Women could be simultaneously more selective than in the past, and less promiscuous. Or more promiscuous. That data doesn't tell us.
This looks like the start of an incel complaint. You really think that 1/8 of men are sexing up 8x women, and "taking your opportunity" or something? In reality women are looking for partners too. No one owes anyone anything, just be a decent person, try to get over your expectations of the world owing you something.
It dances around the point but the GP's logic seems plausible, if exaggerated. If the increase in sexlessness among young men is ~twice that of the increase of sexlessness in young women over the same timeframe, it is quite plausible that the same men are having sex with more women.
It just is more likely for a man to only have 1-2 partners before settling down with one. While a female may have had 2-10x that number by the time they settle down.
Its that 1/8 of men that have many partners, while 4/8 woman have many partners.
A man can be a sl*t too.
But you'll find that these days a young man is more likely to want to start a family than a young woman. And this has been proven over and over again by studies.
> This looks like the start of an incel complaint.
Do you really think that this matters in a discussion? An argument is either valid or not. It doesn't matter if it's used in a currently ostracized community or by people having unhealthy views.
I was bullied in elementary school which gave me a high sensitivity to social rejection. I was really afraid of dying alone in high school. Although I was not treated cruelly as a teen I heard a lot of "be yourself", "be a decent person", "it will get better in the sweet bye and bye".
That was the beginning of seven years of despair which still affect me decades later. In particular, a lot of guys seem to focus on "being a decent person" and find that what they get is a lot of listening to women complain about their bad boyfriends. (I didn't particularly fall for that --it but I have a tenant who tells me all sorts of things that women told him that he shouldn't be repeating to me.)
I think a lot of men are in situations where they see no path forward. The blackpill incel stuff is poison but I know I felt absolutely alone (couldn't get any recognition from adults and teens that I had a problem) when I was a teenager and if Wheat Waffles had been around back then I probably would have thought "here is a movement of people like me, for the first time I feel like somebody hears me"
(My son had a friend fall under Wheat's spell and he disconnected from my son Scientology-style because my son was taller than him and was concerned my son would "heightmog" him.)
Listen or not you're going to hear more and more from people who steal the vocabulary and discursive techniques of the incels.
If people pay attention they might discover the magic keys to solving problems like "blacks vs the police", "residential segregation of racial minorities", "women getting paid less than men" and "i can't afford healthcare" that never go away -- all of them have a structure similar to the incel problem in that people are making a demand which could seem reasonable in the abstract that becomes unreasonable or unsatisfiable when you expect that some particular person in some particular situation do something for you.
The median age at first sex declined among women born in the 1950s and 1960s, but beginning with women born in the 1970s, this trend halted at about 17.0 years of age, and the median age actually increased by almost a year among cohorts coming of age in the late 1990s. Accordingly, the “current” median age (i.e., the median for the most recent cohort for which a median can be calculated) at first sex is 17.8 for women.
A similar increase beginning with the 1982 birth cohort was seen for men (Figure 2), although median age at first sex was stable for those born between 1960 and 1985, at about 17.0. The “current” median age at first sex for men is 18.1.
So young people start having sex about a year later, men 0.1 years later than women. Not really a huge difference compared to the overall change.
If you think that women must have a lot more sex than men because they'd have an easy time finding a random man who'd sleep with them, you should consider that most women don't want to sleep with just any random man. Similarly, if men who're not having sex were fine with any random partner, they could just pay a prostitute. But clearly people have higher standards than that.
I am a young guy and used to believe stats like this.
Now, I view it as a conspiracy theory that's meant to make young guys paranoid. And of course, many of those who come up with these theories, have books and courses to sell to those who believe them.
Wait, how is that even mathematically possible? Most people are heterosexual and there is roughly the same number of men and women. Are you saying that there is a small cohort of men that have sex with most of the women? I find it hard to believe — most people, men and women, are monogamous.
Metrics like this tend to binary outcomes like "had sex within the past n months" not total quantity of sex. They also get distorted because young men are in part losing out to older men. I think the differences are mostly overblown.
One possible explanation is that, as you say, "most people" are monogamous -- the rest are a group of men who have more partners drawn from the same group of women (excluding the monogamous women), and a group of men who are not having partners at all.
See this article [0] discussing a study, and specifically this quote in it which I think reconciles both your point and the GP's:
> Most women and men reported at least weekly sex, and most people reported having one sexual partner in the prior year. In the most recent surveys, men age 18 to 44 were more likely to have had no partners in the past year (16 percent) compared to women (12 percent). Men also were more likely to have had three or more partners in the past year (15 percent) compared to women (7 percent).
> Wait, how is that even mathematically possible? Most people are heterosexual and there is roughly the same number of men and women.
Men:women are born at 107:100. There are about 7% more men than women in the world at birth. This only evens out by age 40. This is due to suicide rates among men being wildly higher.
Most men and women are monogamous - but many people date. A few men sleep with many women. Many men never see a date or any sex. 25% of men will be childless. 15% of women will be childless. It should get kinda obvious how this works even with a monogamous society. Women can get sex when they want and not commit to someone even in a monogamous society. The attractive men can choose to be non-committal and sleep with many women. Eventually - many women will commit to a man but it will be to a man who had very few partners whereas the woman might've slept with many of the men who get to sleep with many women.
Basically - the idea is that a small subset of men are sleeping with all the women. The women might settle down eventually but they will inevitably settle down with a man who did not have many sexual partners.
107:100 is either the high end of the range or outside of the range, depending on which estimate you look at. 105:100 seems to be closer to mid-range. [0]
> This only evens out by age 40.
Globally, it's actually closer to 50. [1] In particular countries this varies a lot from the global average, and, yes, the US is around 40. [2]
> This is due to suicide rates among men being wildly higher.
No, it's not. Boys have significantly higher infant mortality and males have higher rates of violent (even excluding suicide) and accidental death at all age ranges. Suicide isn't the main differentiating factor.
I’m comparing US. Not global. Since the article is about the US.
Research into “accidental deaths” a bit more. You’ll find it’s not that “accidental.” A lot of things get ruled as an accidental deaths when they’re not. This is due to the US trying to save face. Work in the military enough and you’ll see what I mean.
And yes - seems closer to 105:100. Just ignore under age 5 age count if you’re bothered by increased infant mortality. You’ll find it’s still 105:100…
For those asking for evidence, this is a piece if it [0]. Lack of sex is driven by young people, mainly young men. Although the share of sexless women happens to be at an all time high as well, it is nowhere near the level of men.
I don't think though it can be inferred from here that women hook up with the top 10/15% of men.
The article almost exclusively talks about the US.
One reason that isn't mentioned in the article is because the US is fundamentally based on puritanism and a lot of its values, especially concerning passion and sexuality are still prevalent in its culture.
The "All American" OJ and corn flakes breakfast and circumcision (used as a form of genital mutilation to prevent masturbation) by Kellogs is still practiced to this day. In the US, sex is heavily politicized.
On one hand, everything is hypersexualized, but there is nothing genuine about any of it. When you get to the basics of it — sex is wrong. "Look, but don't touch". Everything is relegated to the sphere of fantasy and imagination.
Especially teenage sexuality is something that's vilified to no end. You can't expect adults to have a healthy sex life if everything they know about sex so far is that it's some sort of forbidden fruit.
__________________
Eh sure. Might be wrong. This is my experience with people I've interacted with.
Puritanism regarding sex is trending down and has been for a long time. Puritanism regarding indulging the brain through other means is also trending down.
If circumcision had even the most tiny sliver of anything to do with it you can bet your ass that there would be an associated stereotype that's older than the US.
Teenage sex isn't vilified. It's all over in pop culture. See all the bottom of the barrel high-school drama shows that Netflix puts out for example. We don't talk about this because it's hard to reconcile with the "you're too stupid to make decisions because prefrontal cortex" message we bombard teens with at every opportunity.
This is the most “i read it on the internet” explanation I’ve ever seen.
After the sexual revolution of that happened 60 years ago and the acceptance of casual sex even on television 40 years ago, OP is going with the “the puritans of the 1600’s are to blame”.
I LOL’ed.
I highly recommend the OP Google his closest dive bar and drink until closing time then go and change those stats personally.
What he said is true in rural America. In the religious areas, which is most of 'em. This is a divided country. You'd be shocked at how seriously people take religion and how it affects views on sex.
Having gone to private Christian schools when I was younger (in suburban America but not quite rural), I'm going to offer the anecdote that religious people are just as sexual as non-religious people.
I'm sorry, but there are tons of young people from religious or conservative families who wait until marriage to have sex and marry young, and/or don't begin their sexual exploration until well into college. Your anecdotal point notwithstanding. All human beings are equally sexual in terms of their drive and interest, but religion can and does alter psychology and behavior.
There are places where religion is common but isn't taken that seriously, and then there are places were it's common and it is taken very seriously. Sounds like your school was the former and that's fine. It doesn't preclude the existence of the latter.
> I'm sorry, but there are tons of young people from religious or conservative families who wait until marriage to have sex and marry young
The parent poster implied that people were highly bound by their religion; I simply offered a counterexample. I am not saying that abstinence until marriage never happens.
> and/or don't begin their sexual exploration until well into college
This is not relevant since the teaching is abstinence until marriage, not abstinence until college.
> This is not relevant since the teaching is abstinence until marriage, not abstinence until college.
A common effect of religious influence is delayed sexual exploration (i.e., later than what's natural given human biological development). The fact that you need this to be explained to you shows that you aren't aware of the phenomenon we're discussing. It's something that's very hard to understand if you haven't lived it.
I've heard of all the kinds of concepts they invent to have sex while saying they didn't. They'll show up as untainted by impure thoughts and behavior in surveys, but they're having it.
One recurring thing in particular: religious men who have sex with men and consider themselves abstinent/faithful to their wives because "it doesn't count."
Well the data goes against your opinion. Kids aren't hanging out in bars and sleeping around like the good ol days. They are online much more.
Also, the US is still super puritan, it is conservative outwardly and it makes up for it by being deviant privately, travel, most countries are much more open about sex. Be it public display of affection, legal sex work, sex education, down to just physical contact from kisses in greetings, and public nudity at the beach, etc.
Americans are, in general, prudes in public and slutty in private. While much of the world is the opposite.
I think you're exaggerating/generalizing quite a bit. Although, I agree about the legal sex work. I'm also thankful there's no public nudity at the beaches here. The people you'd want to see naked won't be, and vice versa.
If this article can be taken to be representative of strange, pervasive, American views, I think it's showing a lot of its cards in the premise implied by the title[1], which I think asks the wrong question. There's almost the implication that sex is like money - more is always better, every dollar is the same as every other dollar, and it's as much about status as it is about the thing itself. There are other question to be asked: are people having good sex? Are they enjoying it, having fun? Is sex improving their lives? Are they learning things about themselves and other people, forming fond memories and relationships? To a certain extent, having more sex gives you more chance to learn, but I think it's a huge mistake to focus so much on the sheer quantity.
[1] yes, I know that article titles are dumb and aren't chosen by the editors, not the authors.
History suggests this isn't something HN likes to discuss, but could it also correlate with the rise of queer identities and general decline of straight sexual relationships? Half of my peers (myself included) came out as gay or queer after high school. That doesn't necessarily insinuate that they didn't engage in straight sex at the time, but the overall interest in it is certainly diffusing. I personally couldn't see myself in a fulfilling, long-term relationship with the opposite sex. Combined with the culture shock of being raised on Pam Stenzel videos, I don't really see this as surprising at all.
But I also don't really see it as an issue? Overpopulation has been a looming concern for the past few generations of human existence. Letting go of our "go forth and multiply" mindset has been a few decades in the making now, and loosening our regulation/criticism of the LGBTQ community coincides with that pretty nicely. Love is a matter of reciprocal fulfillment, and much to the chagrin of the self-proclaimed gigachads browsing Orange Site and /g/, that doesn't inherently necessitate procreation or family-building.
> Sexual activity was largely unchanged among unmarried women, along with no notable decline among gay men, researchers reported.
As an almost middle-aged straight man, from Europe, I see the problem described and discussed here as _mostly_ related to young men, seemingly incabable of forming normal healhy romantic relationships. There also seem a growing number of young women who cannot find a suitable partner amongst their own age group, since there are so many young men that simply don't fit the profile they're looking for.
That's obviously just anectdotal, and possibly just an old man yelling at the cloud. After all, hooking up at bars is something old people do. :D
It's definitely an issue we need to look into though. At least if we're at all interested in keeping our own cultures alive. If we don't, it's not going to be the end of civilization itself; it's just going to be the end of our own civilization since other cultures without such issues will still be around.
I mean, this has always been the case, though, so not sure what this long, rambling comment has to do with the decline happening today. I also think you're being hyperbolic. No one, except fringe groups, treats sex that way here.
That doesn't really explain the downward trend--at least directly. As the article hints at, our view of pre-marital sex has never been more positive.
And the article does not that other countries are seeing the same trend--though the ones that are mentioned are also historically protestant.
I think its probably the opposite. Historical dating has been stigmatized. The norm seems to be sex first, then a relationship. Young women, in particular, but also young men, are described as "needy," "clingy," or "creepy" if they expect monogamy from the outset of dating. I'd probably still be a virgin if I had to lose it during a one night stand.
> As the article hints at, our view of pre-marital sex has never been more positive.
Depends how you define "positive": Sure, it's not so much condemned on puritanical grounds any more (at least not openly). But if many of the kinds of (i.e. young, single) people who used to have lots of it are now all "meh" about it, then that's not much of a "positive view", now is it?
This is nonsense. Religion, and associated sexual puritanism, are trending down in the US rapidly and have been for 60 years. By what mechanism is it exerting more control now than 20 years ago?
I work with a very large-scale UK survey that roughly covers the boomer generation: people born 1940-1970. Take a moment to guess the median lifetime number of sexual partners.
.
.
.
It's 3. Other people have less sex than you think.
Interestingly, the average must be the same for men and women (assuming equal numbers and considering only sex between one man and one woman), by construction. But that does not hold for the median necessarily.
The number of partners does in no way tell you much about the amount of sex people have. A person could have a single partner their whole life but bang every day. Compare that to a person who hooks up with a new person once every two weeks. The first person has 14 times more sex than the second but the number of partners would paint a very different picture.
This is very true with the Gen Zers, Especially the Early Gen Z. You folk that are in your mid 20's. Really People born after 1995 are not Millennial. Its hard to even justify people born in 94 a Millennial. You don't remember 911, and you didn't experience last last economic recession first hand in the work force. If your first out of HS job was after 2012, You are a Gen Zer.
They simply are struggling, very few have moved up in their career paths. And so far have been one of the most lazy generations.
I don't agree at all that they are a lazy generation. They've just been presented with little to no economic opportunities, especially in areas that many of them care about like climate collapse, which is an in-our-lifetime threat to them. There's not much in the way of an economic ladder, and many are saddled with a great deal of student debt because they've had it drilled into them that a degree is the only way to get a good job. Then you graduate with a degree and there are still no good jobs, but you still have to pay it off.
I've had so many Gen Z interns that I've noticed they dont care about being fired from a job right out of College. Little Drive to keep themselves busy. They don't like to ask questions, and would rather do something wrong than ask and do it right the first time. Even If I show them how to do it right the first time, if you forget, just ask.
There isn't much of a ladder to climb as Millennials are still there to fill the void. Millennials have work experience and work hard.
But there is a notable gap and a Gen Zer is easy to pick from the crowd.
Not all are bad though. In fact many didn't have to struggle like a Millennial did early in life. My first 5 years in the work force was slow moving up the ladder. Entering the workforce in 2008 was not pretty for me.
Problem with GenZ is they didn't eat the flintstone vitamins we Millennial ate, and it shows.
Could you please provide some source? I find this really hard to believe. Quick googling led me to some articles about growing ratio of _young_ adults (16 - 23) living with their parents, nothing about adults.
Indeed, there are so many problems caused by the lack of housing construction (that is nationwide and codified in law) that many attribute to pretty much anything but this readily identifiable trend.
I also believe it is a significant input to the trend of younger people not "bothering" to work hard. From the perspective of someone very young, it may well appear that working 40+ hours per week does little to increase their actual standard of living. This is historically demonstrated to reduce entry into the workforce so long as people are otherwise able to meet their needs (e.g., not starve or go homeless), and in the U.S. an 18 year-old used to be able to get a full-time job then with one or two buddies afford their own apartment (and own room). In many places across the U.S., they will be sharing rooms in an apartment which may be a reduction in standard of living from "mom's basement".
Both "mom's basement" and room sharing may be perceived as low class and undesirable, particularly for a young man, as status is one of the historically strong factors for attracting women.
True, and I think with the stratospheric income inequality it's becoming more obvious to many that working hard does not lead to success when investors and executives are capturing more and more of the value of companies. Nobody wants to work hard to be paid nothing while their efforts just further enrich the already-rich.
This also contributes to the housing shortage as the wealthy buy up property as real estate investments and either rent them out, leaving renters with no equity to realise into deposits for better housing down the line, or leave them empty.
> True, and I think with the stratospheric income inequality it's becoming more obvious to many that working hard does not lead to success when investors and executives are capturing more and more of the value of companies. Nobody wants to work hard to be paid nothing while their efforts just further enrich the already-rich.
This is introducing some other topic into the discussion. The problem of housing price increases is unrelated to this, and more likely related to destruction of new-business formation. The American middle class has always been lead by small businesses, and new business formation has been steadily dropping for decades. Small businesses do not suffer the same issues as working in large corporations, so when large corporations make up larger and larger percentages of the workforce, they also shift other aspects related to employment and income.
> This also contributes to the housing shortage as the wealthy buy up property as real estate investments and either rent them out, leaving renters with no equity to realise into deposits for better housing down the line, or leave them empty.
The housing shortage is completely a regulatory problem where the supply is artificially constricted in ways it was never previously controlled. People often think of housing as somehow not falling into the same supply and demand price function problems as other products, but this simply isn't true. The "wealthy" could never hope to purchase all of the bread fast enough to make any real dent in the price because of how rapidly the production of bread would be increased with their artificial increase in demand. This scheme can only work with artificial constriction on supply that comes from the regulations on the construction of new residential units, because without these regulatory constrictions developers would build houses until either the investors run out of money or we are all working in the home construction industry.
The blue collar middle class of the middle century was led by industrial scale manufacturing, which doesn't typically come from small companies.
I know supply side restriction constrains the creation of new housing as well, but the wealthy buying up properties in cities and renting them out or leaving them unoccupied restricts access to property in areas where land for new building is limited. You can build suburbs all day out in the stix (theoretically) but nobody who works in a city wants a 2 hour commute each way.
Depends on the city of course; I'm thinking Toronto, New York and London where empty houses are a big problem but I know that SF has a major issue with NIMBYism so YMMV.
ITT: Folks quickly contributing their "definite reason" of why this is happening which is also covered in incredible detail and with tons of nuance in the article.
Agreed. There's very little actual science in this article, it just jumps around a bunch. It's peppered with phrases like:
- "Many -- or all -- of these things may be true."
- "Let’s consider this lure for a moment."
- "I can’t know that they were representative, though I did seek out people with a range of experiences."
- "Some observers have suggested..."
There's a huge amount of positing that something may possibly be a cause, often at best backed up with research that shows that it exists (as opposed to evidence that there's a strong correlation or any kind of scientific testing to indicate a causal relationship). There's also a ton of "person X says Y in their new book, could they be right?".
I don't understand where the praise for this article is coming from, if this is actually where the research on dating behavior is right now, then it's pseudoscience. I honestly would have expected HN to be a lot more critical of this, I've seen articles with less conjecture than this one get torn to shreds on here.
My fear when I was young was that women for the most part really would rather not, but just put up with it because it was sort of required if you wanted to participate in the married and had kids portion of civilization.
The older I get, the more I suspect I was probably right.
All women want sex, but they probably don't want sex with you.
This is the biggest difference that people need to understand. Most men would have sex with most women. Most women would not have sex with most men.
Even men in the top 10% of attractiveness can easily find women who won't have sex with them. Meanwhile women in the top 50% of attractiveness can effortlessly find men who will have sex with them.
They're also perfectly capable of not enjoying it. It's not altogether uncommon for women to experience a complete lack of sex drive and even active aversion to it, of a sort that most men (asexuals aside, ofc.) would only personally associate to some flu-like sickness or malaise. It's hardly fair to only point to those who are talking about wanting more, when just as many are saying the very opposite!
I can imagine believing this before the internet, but it really isn't hard to find women online talking about how they are upset their partner doesn't want to have sex with them as much as they want to have sex.
I was one of those who took an SSRI and had a change in my sex drive. I took escitalopram and it killed my sex drive, doc switched me to trazodone and things returned to normal.
If your SSRI is causing you problems, talk to your doctor, they can switch it up. Everyone responds differently, you should be able to find one that won't mess with it.
319 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 254 ms ] threadIn my mid-30s I ran through a spate of recent divorcees who all had almost exactly the same complaint. Their husband of 10 years hadn't slept with them in 5+ years, and was always in the basement playing video games or watching porn. Which he didn't want to watch with her. Two of them - totally separately - told me they would dress up in lingere and go to the basement and the husband would say he was too tired. A third said she felt "unfuckable" and started crying recounting it. (I said, oh no! You're totally fuckable! I also said, I would never play a video game rather than lay in bed with you. And it was like... holy shit) This is literally what's going on.
That’s not very much at all. Some of us are daily+ kind of people (and yes we have hard jobs that make a lot of money, too). Hope your wife is satisfied with this arrangement.
My wife and I just have one 4 month old but we’re making an effort to have sex the days that we can. It’s not easy with a kid at this age! We maybe get one nap in the evening. After the baby goes to bed my wife usually needs to pump and get to sleep early enough so she gets enough before the baby wakes.
At some point I'm going to ask her for details. Maybe their sessions are pretty quick, for instance.
And I do stuff with my kids every day.
Dad time is a everyday thing with my children.
Even if it is for only 20 minuets per child. Or hours.
Homework and spending time with family are very important for my kids.
Having sex daily is a young couple fantasy, and really at this point just waiting time.
Time is the one thing we dont have. If Im not feelin it, and the wife isn't feeling it. I'm not going to force it. And If I want it, and she dont. Rubbing one off out in my office quick after the kids are in bed is no big deal.
That is a good approach. I'm just saying that my "feeling it" is daily+, and I've been married to the same woman for over 10 years now. Libido varies.
This isn't a judgement on your frequency, just contributing to the conversation so people have an accurate idea of sexuality distribution.
All I meant by it is making six figures by the time you turn 30 is not as easy as a task.
Having sex shouldn't be exhausting. It's fun and easy.
In fact, your whole post makes me tired just reading it. You sound exhausted. I hope you can find a way to get some rest.
Yeah of course it is fun, and makes your body hurt the next day.
But it is a process, and spending 30 minuets to do something I can rub out in a few minuets isn't always worth it. I am tired, and rest is not an option.
Even when you go on vacation, you are not resting. You are working to allow your kids to have fun. You come home more tired than when you left.
Yeah sexy is fun, and easy. when the time is right. Who has time these days. Time is the one thing I wish I had more of every day.
Every couple is different.
For us there is a lot involved. Toys, spankings, choking, dirty talk, lot of movement, etc.
We can do this once a week and the pleasure gained from it will last days.
Also Locations change things up too. Never like spicing this up during a xmas party by sneaking off and getting it on.
You might be 10 years luckier. Consider home prices in 2019 versus 2009.
It's happening all around me in SV. Many owners who bought below $1m basically retiring early because they started making $300-500K/yr for the last few years and now are FIRE'd thanks to the incredible wage growth while they locked in a much lower COL than people who had to buy 10 years later.
Here's the fun part - we aren't expecting your standard senior IC to be making 7 figures in the next few years but that's what it'd take to be comparable to the wage growth that we've seen in SV in the last decade along with housing prices.
Keep in mind there is no 'the police' in the US there are like 10K different jurisdictions all doing their own thing and a little 2K person town with one sheriff and two deputies will function much different from the NYC police department.
And this, my friends, is what you get for giving way to a culture of hyper-individualization and materialism.
My goal even from a young age before kids was to build generational wealth.
We live in a world where money makes a big difference in lifestyle.
Living Paycheck to Paycheck is a shitty way to live life. I did plenty of that early in life, and grew up in a house hold that lived paycheck to paycheck. I don't want that for my kids.
You could be the King of England for all I care, if your relationship with your wife depends on how much you make compared to her, you have a lot (a lot!) of soul searching to do.
Historically women have married up in status. They still have that preference but that preference is not realistic now that more women are rising up higher in the workforce.
Between us working hard so we can retire early in life, we could stop working at the age of 45 if we wanted and our investments would still grow while living off them, I have plenty of enjoyment at home after work. I love cooking, I love engineering and wooding in my shop, I love playing video games, I love programming small little gadgets, I love to learn. Hell I even love to catch up on a TV show with the Wife, or play some Mario Party as a family.
We're in bed by 10 most nights, and I'm up before 6. Me and the Wife don't need to have sex every night. Sure that was a thing years ago, but 15 years in once a week makes up happy.
I get more enjoyment teaching my daughter how to design and build something from start to finish, or playing some Minecraft with my Boys. Making Something for dinner we've never had, etc. My priorates are in the correct space.
Sure, but there are things that kids need a lot more than money. Like a parent who is present and enjoys life, not always working and always exhausted. Also, kids are profoundly affected by the level of warmth or intimacy between their parents. If you feel too tired to enjoy sex with your wife, it is probably leaking into other areas as well.
My parents are millionaires and they havent given me anything post undergraduate. There were times I was desperate for money (e.g. to make payroll) and they wouldnt bend. They said you will find a way and be a stronger person for it. They were right.
My whole life I knew that all my parents' money was going to my disabled brother and so I haven't planned for it and am fine.
True happiness comes from within, not from material goods (beyond basic food and shelter).
What my parents did give me were the tools and education to know how to not live paycheck to paycheck. It doesnt matter how much money you make, it matters how much you save. When I was in grad school (90s) I made about 12K/year and saved about 2K/year. I did get myself into credit card trouble early on but dug myself out and then had a surplus.
So they gave you everything until you were basically 22? Do you even realize how much of your life they've set up for you?
Generational wealth is mostly irrelevant for most kids anyway. They're not getting the wealth until the parents die (Parents tend to die when kids are in their 50s). The grandchildren will receive it much sooner than the parents will (in terms of relative position to their birth).
The data does not back that assertion up, at all.
>Honestly having sex more than 1-2 times in a single week is exhausting.
Well, that's a problem. Sex is supposed to be reinvigorating, not exhausting.
Median home prices are accelerating in their annual price increase with a significant uptrend beginning on the mid- to late '90s. This represents a significant percentage of personal budgets, and those who are on the margins will be pushed out without increasing their income.
It is an assertion on your part that there is no data.
FWIW the idea of jerking off while your SO hangs out smoking weed and playing a video game is ...pretty alien and crazy to me. But I've been in mostly very long relationships and I do understand the ennui.
Not a significant thing
> An inability to have basic conversation.
Not a significant thing
> And the boys are totally ineffectual and terrified of trying to kiss a girl; it's been made faux pas to show any inclination. It's hard enough as a teenager to get up the courage to kiss a girl.
I mean you shouldn't kiss a girl without consent, but I assure you, plenty of teenagers are kissing
> Imagine if you think there's a 50/50 chance she'll completely destroy your life on social media, rather than just say "no thanks".
It's really not a thing. This one is just stupid. This time of thinking is OCD level anxiety of about unrealistic outcomes.
> In my mid-30s I ran through a spate of recent divorcees who all had almost exactly the same complaint. Their husband of 10 years hadn't slept with them in 5+ years, and was always in the basement playing video games or watching porn. Which he didn't want to watch with her. Two of them - totally separately - told me they would dress up in lingere and go to the basement and the husband would say he was too tired. A third said she felt "unfuckable" and started crying recounting it. (I said, oh no! You're totally fuckable! I also said, I would never play a video game rather than lay in bed with you. And it was like... holy shit) This is literally what's going on.
As a late 20's, moderately sexed, east coaster, the quote here is weird, dude. Both the content and the fact that it's being shared at all. People being depressed and having low sex drives and maybe just not liking their wives is bad and definitely a thing. Guys who can't comprehend not prioritizing sex as the top item at all times is also weird. I don't have interest in fucking more than maybe 3 times per week on a good week. Other than that and I would almost certainly prefer playing a game with my wife.
I agree with OP. People around my generation (middle of the road millennial) and especially those younger have laughable basic social skills. The median 25-year-old can't talk on the phone, walk up to someone at a party and start a conversation, or act like a human being with a cashier or server. They also flake out on plans some huge percentage of the time. Drugs, porn, games, and social media are preferred to face-to-face interaction. Normal interactions, which are obviously often slightly awkward, are "cringe," and obsession with them produces a neurotic paranoia in daily interactions. And then we wonder why there's a mental health crisis, and why our communities are disintegrating, or why no one trusts society or one another.
The point is that social skills - properly understood - are learnable and developable skills, and adapt creatively to changes in social norms. It's not for bad reasons that "trying to kiss a girl" has become so cringe. Why are you trying to do something that intimate when you have no clue how the other person will react? It makes no sense. Work around all that crap instead, focus on being attractive on your own terms and on showing off the best side of yourself in ways that are not inherently threatening if the other person doesn't like it. Plenty of creative possibilities there. The rest will follow if you do it right. If it turns out that she expects you to take risks you're not comfortable with (which is the only reason anyone ever could have thought that the cringe thing made any sense at all), that's her loss not yours. Even then you can still be friendly, and maybe she'll change her mind after all.
Oh cringe, is it? I'd say your generation cringing at the thought gets directly to the reason it has no sex.
>> Why are you trying to do something that intimate when you have no clue how the other person will react?
Possibly precisely because you don't know how they'll react. Whoa, crazy right? You might initiate something without prior consent and see what happens? Holy fuck!
You aren't trying to do anything against someone's will. You aren't going to kiss the girl unless she wants to kiss you. But when you're 15 years old and you go on a first date, you do already know you'd like to kiss that girl. And you also know she isn't going to kiss you first.
It takes risk. No you don't take that risk if you think the girl doesn't like you, but it's still scary and risky all the same if you think she does. Having no clue how she's gonna react and taking a leap -- that's what you need to do to learn, both ways, to grow up. A lot of the problem with men not respecting women is down to men not learning when they aren't invited for a kiss.
But ya can't learn until you've tried. And when you're 15, trying to kiss a girl you like is pretty much the most important thing on earth. And if you don't know that, never experienced it or don't remember it, all I can say is I feel sorry for you. If you ever go on a date and carry through for a couple hours - and you're still interested, without thinking "how should I kiss that girl"? Then you're missing one of the better parts of life.
In any case, intellectualizing it to the point of obliterating all unplanned activity in the name of policing everyone's behavior and telling them they're dirty or wrong for kissing strangers is a victorian, petit bourgeois fascist little conceit which like most of your generation's ill-formed ideas will be trodden over by your children who are gonna go hog-wild fuckin' every cock in sight in return for your closed-minded, terrified little incel ideas about life.
My point is that your anecdata is garbage. Older folks saying young people don't know how to communicate is a centuries old trope.
Most people can communicate just fine. Given that you are citing people flaking, one might assume that the traits you're applying to an entire generation of individuals may just be your shitty friends. Little bubbles at the top of reddit don't matter either.
Congrats on finally being old enough to start blaming the younger generations. Here's your tropey millennial participation trophy.
Many people aren't good at phone calls. You know why? Because they don't talk on the phone.
OP was offering a theory that more communication moving to media that transmits communication with less or no physical/verbal context might cause difficulties transitioning to intimate physical activity.
He has the stats on his side, so he is not trying to persuade us that there is a trend that requires an explanation in the first place.
I think you provided a good enough theory why it's okay that there isn't as much conventional sex happening; the next step is to see how it might not contradict his theory.
Yet another of your points that sucks, since it wasn't their "anecdata": You're replying to two different people.
> Older folks saying young people don't know how to communicate is a centuries old trope. [...] Most people can communicate just fine.
So you've missed all the myriad "I hardly ever answer when my phone rings, and never initiate any phone calls myself" comments in various threads here on HN?
> Many people aren't good at phone calls. You know why? Because they don't talk on the phone.
Yeah, exactly. Or perhaps the other way around: They don't dare talk on the phone because they know they suck at it.
So... Do you think all those "I never use my phone for actual phone calls" comments on here are made by oldsters much more than youngsters?
If you aren't good at sex or have bad sex, practice. That includes becoming physically fit to increase your stamina and strength during sex with your partner.
This philosophy is a recipe for a disastrous relationship. Every single person I've ever talked to in a long-running successful marriage has told me that sex is not a substitute for emotional intimacy, and that emotional intimacy is the core of their marriage that survives even as they age and even as they start to have sex less.
By my experience and observation, porn is really bad for oneself, and it’s really addicting. I’m a millennial male, and at some point, all four of us in my friend group realized and mentioned we are addicted to porn.
I still have addiction issues, but I’ve managed to reduce my use on average to once every 2-4 weeks from 4-5+ times a week, and the benefits to my entire life and being have been immense immense immense.
I definitely believe you, and well aware you are not alone in the peergroup, I just personally can't imagine my relationship to porn ever winning out over real sex. Even bad sex is better than the best porn.
If you’re a porn user, I would suggest that you give it a try and observe what happens in your direct experience. Take a break from porn and masturbation. I think that if your discernment is subtle and sensitive enough, you will definitely notice something. What’s the harm in a fun little experiment?
Sometimes, science lags behind a bit on describing and explaining the phenomena of this universe. This doesn’t invalidate the occurrence of the phenomena themselves or make them inexistent. Sometimes, science just needs a bit more time to catch up, and improve its sophistication and paradigms.
What would the science explain? that people like sexual activity, alone or with partner? that's not exactly new. A habit becomes a problem when it is compulsive. This is rare. It's also not an entirely new situation. For most of history prostitution was widely available, even state-regulated for low prices in cases. But it s not like they all became sex addicts, it was rare.
And porn has only been ubiquitous and effortlessly available for what, maybe a decade or two. It stands to reason that the scientific examination of the consequences is not completed yet.
Not meeting people anymore, because of the pandemic, had a much bigger impact for me. I never was particular successful with dating apps, real-life worked magnitides better.
I have started to look into sexuality and tantra, and it really seems like there are some effects people will only see after 5-6 days abstinence.
And yes, the added energy will definitely also make men more willing to do the hunt, if they don't ejaculate 2 times a day.
Porn, however, seems to be the enabler of so much ejaculation.
Then again: The risk / unknowns of getting a partner can definitely also outweigh the cons of abstinence.
You know this sounds creepy right? Misogynistic?
Women are more than trophies to be won in a hunt. They're people, just like you and I.
And this comment is also a prime example of the derailment that leads to the vanilla meeting between the genders.
(I expect people to be able the read "masculine core" for men and "feminine core" for women)
Do you also take issue with the phrases like "How to win his heart" or "You need to win her over"?
Perhaps it is you with your interpretation that is misogynistic. The person was writing focusing on men, but both men and women are on the hunt for a compatible partner with which they could build a fulfilling relationship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_wife
WTF? We ban accounts that post like this. No more of this, please.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Is this not begging the question? A cursory glance through pubmed doesn't show evidence for this.
If you were to say you did most other tasks four to five times a week you would call it a habit and not an addiction.
Certainly compulsive sexual behavior, hypersexuality disorder, and sexual addiction have many hits in pubmed but the requirements seem to require significant negative impacts on one's life and not the actions themselves (or necessarily even the frequency) as the issue.[1]
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.13366
But not from a scientific perspective. ... But go on, go on...
> it’s widespread porn use, which has extremely detrimental effects on your dopamine system, which leads to something you might term ‘lack of charisma, confidence and vital energy’, which leads to less people having sex due to confidence/charisma issues and lack of any drive.
Your perspective is wrong and your individual direct experience means nothing and cannot be generalised to others. If you (and your pear group) decide porn is bad for you and you don't watch it anymore, that's your perfectly fine decision -- no one forces porn on you! But do not generalise, please.
Say: 'I was an addict and porn was bad for me.' Do not say: 'porn is highly addictive and bad.'
Porn is quite unlike alcohol. More like chocolate, maybe, but don't cite me on that.
If I could give 2 pieces of advice to all young people (men in particular) it would be to stay off dating apps and leave the porn alone. Go talk to women in real life, as long as you're not trying to get laid with a 30 second conversation you can build those connections up over time and you'll see the difference it makes.
What is rarely talked about is that a lot of porn consumption is done by married men, which leads one to think that the problem is not changing morale norms amongst the youth, but in fact porn itself, better yet: instant access to free algorithmically formulated dopamine stimulation.
It is, literally, living with one's parents. If I had to live with my parents, not only would I never be able to have sex in my own house, but I'd still - as an adult - have to lie about going to someone's house to have sex. I couldn't do the above example. No matter how old I am, my mother treats me as a child, generally with horrible sayings like, "my house, my rules" and the amount of contribution doesn't matter. As you might have guessed, my mother is conservative. My dad was too, while he was alive.
Women, on average, are doing perfectly fine in the sexual marketplace, along with the top 10-15% of men.
edit: The above was my reflexive response to the headline. Now that I've actually read the article, I have to say that the article is very good and quite comprehensive, but it seems that it merely dances around the above issue in the "Tinder Mirage" subsection, but doesn't actually directly confront it. An unfortunate oversight.
It checks all the boxes for a redpill/incel nonsense.
Which is why articles like this always single out young males. Its not that they are unwilling to have sex. They simply just want to have a relationship with a single person.
How the heck is that supposed to work, mathematically?
The rest either are financial loosers or work/family becomes their life. Do nothing more than work all day to bring home the big bucks, and spend the rest of their night with their kids and wife.
If you've ever read articles about Tinder and the whole random hookup culture, you'd know it is largely driven by a small % of men and a wider range of woman that are not looking for a relationship at all. And a large % of Men that fail to attract anything.
I found my soulmate early in life and have kids. Work is my life. I find this whole idea of not enough sex stupid. The real goal is and always has been making money. Jerk off and go back to grinding. Retire at 50. Have mid day sex then. Otherwise jerk off and stick to having sex at night before bed.
Edit: found it; institute of family studies 2022 of no sex in the past 5 years for under 35 year olds.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/more-faith-less-sex-why-are-so-ma...
I read the chart as indicating a jump from ~15% to 28% of men 18-30 not having sex, and women from ~13% to 18%. So perhaps the simultaneous rise could be due to factors like less promiscuity overall or more selectivity, but I find that GP's reasoning is plausible for explaining why sexlessness in men rose higher and faster than that in women.
Your other comment in this overall thread gives me the impression that you actually disagree though, so I think I'm missing something and would appreciate more explanation.
It dances around the point but the GP's logic seems plausible, if exaggerated. If the increase in sexlessness among young men is ~twice that of the increase of sexlessness in young women over the same timeframe, it is quite plausible that the same men are having sex with more women.
It just is more likely for a man to only have 1-2 partners before settling down with one. While a female may have had 2-10x that number by the time they settle down.
Its that 1/8 of men that have many partners, while 4/8 woman have many partners.
A man can be a sl*t too.
But you'll find that these days a young man is more likely to want to start a family than a young woman. And this has been proven over and over again by studies.
Do you really think that this matters in a discussion? An argument is either valid or not. It doesn't matter if it's used in a currently ostracized community or by people having unhealthy views.
I was bullied in elementary school which gave me a high sensitivity to social rejection. I was really afraid of dying alone in high school. Although I was not treated cruelly as a teen I heard a lot of "be yourself", "be a decent person", "it will get better in the sweet bye and bye".
That was the beginning of seven years of despair which still affect me decades later. In particular, a lot of guys seem to focus on "being a decent person" and find that what they get is a lot of listening to women complain about their bad boyfriends. (I didn't particularly fall for that --it but I have a tenant who tells me all sorts of things that women told him that he shouldn't be repeating to me.)
I think a lot of men are in situations where they see no path forward. The blackpill incel stuff is poison but I know I felt absolutely alone (couldn't get any recognition from adults and teens that I had a problem) when I was a teenager and if Wheat Waffles had been around back then I probably would have thought "here is a movement of people like me, for the first time I feel like somebody hears me"
(My son had a friend fall under Wheat's spell and he disconnected from my son Scientology-style because my son was taller than him and was concerned my son would "heightmog" him.)
Listen or not you're going to hear more and more from people who steal the vocabulary and discursive techniques of the incels.
If people pay attention they might discover the magic keys to solving problems like "blacks vs the police", "residential segregation of racial minorities", "women getting paid less than men" and "i can't afford healthcare" that never go away -- all of them have a structure similar to the incel problem in that people are making a demand which could seem reasonable in the abstract that becomes unreasonable or unsatisfiable when you expect that some particular person in some particular situation do something for you.
Quoting from the "Age at first sex" section:
The median age at first sex declined among women born in the 1950s and 1960s, but beginning with women born in the 1970s, this trend halted at about 17.0 years of age, and the median age actually increased by almost a year among cohorts coming of age in the late 1990s. Accordingly, the “current” median age (i.e., the median for the most recent cohort for which a median can be calculated) at first sex is 17.8 for women.
A similar increase beginning with the 1982 birth cohort was seen for men (Figure 2), although median age at first sex was stable for those born between 1960 and 1985, at about 17.0. The “current” median age at first sex for men is 18.1.
So young people start having sex about a year later, men 0.1 years later than women. Not really a huge difference compared to the overall change.
If you think that women must have a lot more sex than men because they'd have an easy time finding a random man who'd sleep with them, you should consider that most women don't want to sleep with just any random man. Similarly, if men who're not having sex were fine with any random partner, they could just pay a prostitute. But clearly people have higher standards than that.
> for men is 18.1.
> men 0.1 years later than women.
18.1 - 17.8 = 0.3, not 0.1
Now, I view it as a conspiracy theory that's meant to make young guys paranoid. And of course, many of those who come up with these theories, have books and courses to sell to those who believe them.
See this article [0] discussing a study, and specifically this quote in it which I think reconciles both your point and the GP's:
> Most women and men reported at least weekly sex, and most people reported having one sexual partner in the prior year. In the most recent surveys, men age 18 to 44 were more likely to have had no partners in the past year (16 percent) compared to women (12 percent). Men also were more likely to have had three or more partners in the past year (15 percent) compared to women (7 percent).
[0]: https://news.iu.edu/stories/2020/06/iub/releases/15-sexual-i...
[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/quillette/status/1105679979256389...
You are forgetting the 4th dimension.
Men:women are born at 107:100. There are about 7% more men than women in the world at birth. This only evens out by age 40. This is due to suicide rates among men being wildly higher.
Most men and women are monogamous - but many people date. A few men sleep with many women. Many men never see a date or any sex. 25% of men will be childless. 15% of women will be childless. It should get kinda obvious how this works even with a monogamous society. Women can get sex when they want and not commit to someone even in a monogamous society. The attractive men can choose to be non-committal and sleep with many women. Eventually - many women will commit to a man but it will be to a man who had very few partners whereas the woman might've slept with many of the men who get to sleep with many women.
Basically - the idea is that a small subset of men are sleeping with all the women. The women might settle down eventually but they will inevitably settle down with a man who did not have many sexual partners.
I've read 18 but I forget the source.
107:100 is either the high end of the range or outside of the range, depending on which estimate you look at. 105:100 seems to be closer to mid-range. [0]
> This only evens out by age 40.
Globally, it's actually closer to 50. [1] In particular countries this varies a lot from the global average, and, yes, the US is around 40. [2]
> This is due to suicide rates among men being wildly higher.
No, it's not. Boys have significantly higher infant mortality and males have higher rates of violent (even excluding suicide) and accidental death at all age ranges. Suicide isn't the main differentiating factor.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio
[1] https://statisticstimes.com/demographics/world-sex-ratio.php
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the...
Research into “accidental deaths” a bit more. You’ll find it’s not that “accidental.” A lot of things get ruled as an accidental deaths when they’re not. This is due to the US trying to save face. Work in the military enough and you’ll see what I mean.
And yes - seems closer to 105:100. Just ignore under age 5 age count if you’re bothered by increased infant mortality. You’ll find it’s still 105:100…
I don't think though it can be inferred from here that women hook up with the top 10/15% of men.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-ame...
One reason that isn't mentioned in the article is because the US is fundamentally based on puritanism and a lot of its values, especially concerning passion and sexuality are still prevalent in its culture.
The "All American" OJ and corn flakes breakfast and circumcision (used as a form of genital mutilation to prevent masturbation) by Kellogs is still practiced to this day. In the US, sex is heavily politicized.
On one hand, everything is hypersexualized, but there is nothing genuine about any of it. When you get to the basics of it — sex is wrong. "Look, but don't touch". Everything is relegated to the sphere of fantasy and imagination.
Especially teenage sexuality is something that's vilified to no end. You can't expect adults to have a healthy sex life if everything they know about sex so far is that it's some sort of forbidden fruit.
__________________
Eh sure. Might be wrong. This is my experience with people I've interacted with.
If circumcision had even the most tiny sliver of anything to do with it you can bet your ass that there would be an associated stereotype that's older than the US.
Teenage sex isn't vilified. It's all over in pop culture. See all the bottom of the barrel high-school drama shows that Netflix puts out for example. We don't talk about this because it's hard to reconcile with the "you're too stupid to make decisions because prefrontal cortex" message we bombard teens with at every opportunity.
Non of this is true in modern America for young folk
After the sexual revolution of that happened 60 years ago and the acceptance of casual sex even on television 40 years ago, OP is going with the “the puritans of the 1600’s are to blame”.
I LOL’ed.
I highly recommend the OP Google his closest dive bar and drink until closing time then go and change those stats personally.
They just won't admit to it openly or on surveys.
There are places where religion is common but isn't taken that seriously, and then there are places were it's common and it is taken very seriously. Sounds like your school was the former and that's fine. It doesn't preclude the existence of the latter.
The parent poster implied that people were highly bound by their religion; I simply offered a counterexample. I am not saying that abstinence until marriage never happens.
> and/or don't begin their sexual exploration until well into college
This is not relevant since the teaching is abstinence until marriage, not abstinence until college.
That isn't true. You offered a counterargument.
> This is not relevant since the teaching is abstinence until marriage, not abstinence until college.
A common effect of religious influence is delayed sexual exploration (i.e., later than what's natural given human biological development). The fact that you need this to be explained to you shows that you aren't aware of the phenomenon we're discussing. It's something that's very hard to understand if you haven't lived it.
One recurring thing in particular: religious men who have sex with men and consider themselves abstinent/faithful to their wives because "it doesn't count."
Also, the US is still super puritan, it is conservative outwardly and it makes up for it by being deviant privately, travel, most countries are much more open about sex. Be it public display of affection, legal sex work, sex education, down to just physical contact from kisses in greetings, and public nudity at the beach, etc.
Americans are, in general, prudes in public and slutty in private. While much of the world is the opposite.
[1] yes, I know that article titles are dumb and aren't chosen by the editors, not the authors.
But I also don't really see it as an issue? Overpopulation has been a looming concern for the past few generations of human existence. Letting go of our "go forth and multiply" mindset has been a few decades in the making now, and loosening our regulation/criticism of the LGBTQ community coincides with that pretty nicely. Love is a matter of reciprocal fulfillment, and much to the chagrin of the self-proclaimed gigachads browsing Orange Site and /g/, that doesn't inherently necessitate procreation or family-building.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-health-sex-idUSKBN23J...
> Sexual activity was largely unchanged among unmarried women, along with no notable decline among gay men, researchers reported.
As an almost middle-aged straight man, from Europe, I see the problem described and discussed here as _mostly_ related to young men, seemingly incabable of forming normal healhy romantic relationships. There also seem a growing number of young women who cannot find a suitable partner amongst their own age group, since there are so many young men that simply don't fit the profile they're looking for.
That's obviously just anectdotal, and possibly just an old man yelling at the cloud. After all, hooking up at bars is something old people do. :D
It's definitely an issue we need to look into though. At least if we're at all interested in keeping our own cultures alive. If we don't, it's not going to be the end of civilization itself; it's just going to be the end of our own civilization since other cultures without such issues will still be around.
And the article does not that other countries are seeing the same trend--though the ones that are mentioned are also historically protestant.
I think its probably the opposite. Historical dating has been stigmatized. The norm seems to be sex first, then a relationship. Young women, in particular, but also young men, are described as "needy," "clingy," or "creepy" if they expect monogamy from the outset of dating. I'd probably still be a virgin if I had to lose it during a one night stand.
Depends how you define "positive": Sure, it's not so much condemned on puritanical grounds any more (at least not openly). But if many of the kinds of (i.e. young, single) people who used to have lots of it are now all "meh" about it, then that's not much of a "positive view", now is it?
.
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It's 3. Other people have less sex than you think.
Paints a different picture doesn't it?
There's a bell curve but the shape of the bell and the length of the tails can really add up to a lot of area not near the middle.
One time a day only - here lies the problem.
My understanding is it's because nobody can afford their own place - either living with their parents or roommates.
They simply are struggling, very few have moved up in their career paths. And so far have been one of the most lazy generations.
There isn't much of a ladder to climb as Millennials are still there to fill the void. Millennials have work experience and work hard.
But there is a notable gap and a Gen Zer is easy to pick from the crowd.
Not all are bad though. In fact many didn't have to struggle like a Millennial did early in life. My first 5 years in the work force was slow moving up the ladder. Entering the workforce in 2008 was not pretty for me.
Problem with GenZ is they didn't eat the flintstone vitamins we Millennial ate, and it shows.
Fact of the matter is that people mature as they age, and gain responsibilities that require them to knuckle down.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...
18- to 29-year-olds living with their parents was 46 before the pandemic, up to 52% now. Although it is more a regression to the mean, historically.
I also believe it is a significant input to the trend of younger people not "bothering" to work hard. From the perspective of someone very young, it may well appear that working 40+ hours per week does little to increase their actual standard of living. This is historically demonstrated to reduce entry into the workforce so long as people are otherwise able to meet their needs (e.g., not starve or go homeless), and in the U.S. an 18 year-old used to be able to get a full-time job then with one or two buddies afford their own apartment (and own room). In many places across the U.S., they will be sharing rooms in an apartment which may be a reduction in standard of living from "mom's basement".
Both "mom's basement" and room sharing may be perceived as low class and undesirable, particularly for a young man, as status is one of the historically strong factors for attracting women.
This also contributes to the housing shortage as the wealthy buy up property as real estate investments and either rent them out, leaving renters with no equity to realise into deposits for better housing down the line, or leave them empty.
This is introducing some other topic into the discussion. The problem of housing price increases is unrelated to this, and more likely related to destruction of new-business formation. The American middle class has always been lead by small businesses, and new business formation has been steadily dropping for decades. Small businesses do not suffer the same issues as working in large corporations, so when large corporations make up larger and larger percentages of the workforce, they also shift other aspects related to employment and income.
> This also contributes to the housing shortage as the wealthy buy up property as real estate investments and either rent them out, leaving renters with no equity to realise into deposits for better housing down the line, or leave them empty.
The housing shortage is completely a regulatory problem where the supply is artificially constricted in ways it was never previously controlled. People often think of housing as somehow not falling into the same supply and demand price function problems as other products, but this simply isn't true. The "wealthy" could never hope to purchase all of the bread fast enough to make any real dent in the price because of how rapidly the production of bread would be increased with their artificial increase in demand. This scheme can only work with artificial constriction on supply that comes from the regulations on the construction of new residential units, because without these regulatory constrictions developers would build houses until either the investors run out of money or we are all working in the home construction industry.
I know supply side restriction constrains the creation of new housing as well, but the wealthy buying up properties in cities and renting them out or leaving them unoccupied restricts access to property in areas where land for new building is limited. You can build suburbs all day out in the stix (theoretically) but nobody who works in a city wants a 2 hour commute each way.
Depends on the city of course; I'm thinking Toronto, New York and London where empty houses are a big problem but I know that SF has a major issue with NIMBYism so YMMV.
Seriously, read the article, it's good.
To me, the article seems just a long collections of folks contributing speculations.
I might be biased because the wife of my cousing-in-law is researching these topics scientifically
- "Many -- or all -- of these things may be true."
- "Let’s consider this lure for a moment."
- "I can’t know that they were representative, though I did seek out people with a range of experiences."
- "Some observers have suggested..."
There's a huge amount of positing that something may possibly be a cause, often at best backed up with research that shows that it exists (as opposed to evidence that there's a strong correlation or any kind of scientific testing to indicate a causal relationship). There's also a ton of "person X says Y in their new book, could they be right?".
I don't understand where the praise for this article is coming from, if this is actually where the research on dating behavior is right now, then it's pseudoscience. I honestly would have expected HN to be a lot more critical of this, I've seen articles with less conjecture than this one get torn to shreds on here.
Kinda like Freud, enough kernels of truth to be kinda accurate in certain situations, but nothing that would stand up to any real scientific rigor.
The older I get, the more I suspect I was probably right.
This is the biggest difference that people need to understand. Most men would have sex with most women. Most women would not have sex with most men.
Even men in the top 10% of attractiveness can easily find women who won't have sex with them. Meanwhile women in the top 50% of attractiveness can effortlessly find men who will have sex with them.
As a Z-ennial, this was one of my confusions, growing up. I would read articles on dating that, in today's standards, I think would not hold up.
It appears as it is OK for people the merely point out how _not_ to court, and then men, automatically, knows how to do it right.
To enjoy sex, or to even have a sex drive, you have to be not taking anti-depression medication. Maybe it's the rise in depressed people[1]?
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[1] I am one of that number, and take meds, and suffer as stated.
I was one of those who took an SSRI and had a change in my sex drive. I took escitalopram and it killed my sex drive, doc switched me to trazodone and things returned to normal.
If your SSRI is causing you problems, talk to your doctor, they can switch it up. Everyone responds differently, you should be able to find one that won't mess with it.