A higher number of sexual partners impairs pair bonding. And obviously if that number is around 23 partners, the odds are not great. I'm not a traditionalist myself, I'm merely stating there are real non-political non-moral reasons to view a high partner count as not conducive to long-term relationship satisfaction.
I've definitely had more than 23 and I love my current partner of 6 years far more than anyone I've loved before. If anything, all the other partners have made me appreciate how amazing of a partner I have. I absolutely could not say the same about the partner previous; or even the one previous to them. I've also heard the sentiment I've expressed many times over by people who have had many partners.
Anyways, I usually bond with people because of the unique things that each partner brings to the table; I've loved each one for very different fun and amazing reasons. Sometimes the bond is tighter because of those unique things, sometimes it's not.
I don't remotely understand why people with no experience in a given subject matter like to speak so authoritatively on it.
The fact that the answerer quotes John McIlhenny, noted Christian abstinence-only prominent, tells me more about that answerer than the questioner.
In my experience, the real answer is that The Pill means that women have more choice now and don't have to cleave themselves to the first man who colonizes them, and now that it's baked into society, women aren't going to put up with men who can't provide the social interaction reward that all people want. In my parents day, you just had to tough it out because you had kids (and you were probably terrible at it, lookin'at you mom and dad) but these days people can grow into functional adults first, which might not happen until their late 30's.
> these days people can grow into functional adults first, which might not happen until their late 30's.
Leaving the rest of the conversation aside, I find this perspective shocking. Becoming a "functional adult" cannot happen in late 30s, or we're all screwed.
> these days people can grow into functional adults first, which might not happen until their late 30's.
Some (many?) won't. Adult means taking responsibility for your own actions to me.
In "archaic" societies, girls become women at the onset of their period. Boys have to undergo painful rituals to become a man. No puberty problems or teenage suicides in sight because these young humans have their place in the tribe and are treated like the young adults they are.
No artificial age barriers (18/21). The brain is actually done at myelinizing at 25.
> Exactly, that's what leads to partner hopping until these multiple digits are reached most likely.
I oversaw the last two words, apologies. Without them the sentence would be logically wrong, the worst kind of wrong ;) They signal that it's up for debate, sorry. Logic pedant out.
I'm unconvinced that "talking through your emotions" makes sense or is wise.
Both "talking" and "emotions" developed in central nervous systems at times far removed from each other, and there's little reason to believe that those software systems are connected... or even compatible.
People without internal dialogues (I'm one myself), don't require "thinking out loud" at all.
Internal dialogues aren't even thinking... it's when this particular faculty of your mind, the "rehearsal simulator" is overactive. Functioning correctly, you can bounce questions off of a fictionalized version of someone and get back replies that can be a useful prediction of what they might say when confronted in reality.
Those whose rehearsal simulators malfunction end up simulating themselves, who then goes on to start jabbering constantly, like some documentary narrator on crack, until they can no longer think at all.
We (those of us who can actually think) have a pretty good idea how this faculty even works. The principle seems rather similar to the LLMs we've all been talking about... it just predicts the most likely word that comes next, with some pseudo-random seed to start it all off. People with the "internal dialogue" only seem able to "think" of things, once everyone has talked about it enough that it amounts to training their LLM with it. When people without internal dialogues try to explain a new idea to them, they tend to respond in ways that indicate their thinking is much like how the LLMs function. Irrational, confused, denialism.
I don't particularly trust self-reporting, but maybe MRIs can empirically measure whether someone has an internal dialogue or not? I would be curious to see the IQ differences between the two groups. It's probably a massive gap. The rehearsal simulator starves the rest of your brain of resources while active. If you ever learned to turn yours off, you'd probably never want it turned back on again.
For instance, someone who does the internal dialogue thing may not even be able to correctly report their emotions. They may not recognize them at all. Instead, that little LLM in their skull is just "hallucinating" for them, coming up with plausible sentences for how someone might feel, based on training data they've accumulated over the years, but having absolutely nothing to do with their emotional state. Anyone who accepts their self-reported emotional state as correct can be very confused by it... visibly, they're in one emotional state, but verbally they're reporting something completely different. There's no reason to suspect dishonest reporting, but also no real way to reconcile the contradictions.
I have been working the past 3 years to turn off my internal dialog because I was only using it to stroke my own ego in a way - imaginary conversations with my boss where I can always respond/counter/defend whatever he MIGHT have to say to me about something. These conversations never occurred in real life, so I realized how senseless it was to devote my attention and energy to something so detached from reality.
I am no worse off for not "thinking things through" in my mind, because I tend to get sudden imprints of what I need to do or say next which are not a serial monologue of thoughts that guide me to understanding. On the other hand, I have been working on categorizing and actually processing my emotions as they are occurring, rather than ignoring them entirely, and many times I do need to have an external, verbal monologue for my subconscious to piece together all of the things it knows implicitly in bulk, but not explicitly as a single coherent concept.
One thing that does come and go is some sort of background music in my head, which also doesn't limit my ability to think. Finally, cannabis CAN give me that "serial monologue in my head" kind of thinking, which I have come to consider a mild "brain vacation" - especially if I am overwhelmed with stress or anxiety.
Another thing is tune whistling/singing, when you think about it it is even more basic then language, just "predicting" the next note in a sequence of notes one already has stored in memory, so pointless, yet objectively satisfying for some reason. I often sing/whistle in the background, I've found it only reduces my ability to think when it gets in the way of what I perceive to be low value work, I think this is due to it being a very low energy, low value activity, whereas similarly low value work may be higher energy, and so it becomes unbearable to stay focused on the work without reverting to a lower energy activity, rather then the internal music overcoming the work. As I acquire further high value work, and surround myself with people who would rather not hear whistling/singing, this habit has decreased considerably. It may be the case that such internal monologues or LLM like activities are not as low energy straight thinking, but maybe they serve some kind of "idling" purpose, reinforcing pattern/logic/computation/memory pathways in the brain, for cheap.
Out of curiosity, have you ever been kept up awake at night by your thoughts, either before an important event or after some problem? If yes, and you have no internal monologue, how does this manifest? Do you simply not feel tired? Or do you feel tired but unable to sleep? Or otherwise?
The fact that the answerer quotes John McIlhenny, noted Christian abstinence-only prominent, tells me more about that answerer than the questioner.
In my experience, the real answer is that The Pill means that women have more choice now and don't have to cleave themselves to the first man who colonizes them, and now that it's baked into society, women aren't going to put up with men who can't provide the social interaction reward that all people want. In my parents day, you just had to tough it out because you had kids (and you were probably terrible at it, lookin'at you mom and dad) but these days people can grow into finctional adults first, which might not happen until their late 30's.
Personally, my number of previous partners is pretty high, to the point where I can’t give you an actual number.
I have definitely noticed that it caused a significant decrease in my ability to connect with people and my tolerance for other people. It develops that “why don’t I just move on” mindset, instead of the “until death” mindset that the previous generations cultivated.
This statistic to me seems like one of the most obvious cases of correlation not equaling causation. How about this hypothesis:
People who aren't good at (or aren't interested in) long term partnerships will tend to have more partners. Therefore such people may be more likely to divorce if they were to marry. People who tend to form long term partnerships won't tend to have many partners, because they have been busy being in long term partnerships instead.
Therefore having a high number of partners doesn't predict "relationship failure" but "relationship failure" predicts a high number of partners.
All this to say - if you're looking for a long term relationship, there may be reason to be cautious about folks who have not had stable long term relationships before, and as result had many partners as they may not be right for you. But it isn't because having lots of sex broke their pair-bonding mechanism.
I've had sex with more people (via swinging with my wife) since getting married than before, and I love my wife incredibly deeply, more and more each year that passes. Having more partners doesn't make me value her less, it has made me value her even more.
for myself (and most) the thought of my wife having sex with anyone but me is horrifying, repugnant and fury-inducing.
So if your idea of a happy long term marriage where we love each other incredibly deeply includes sex outside the marriage (i.e. swinging and similar) I'm going to struggle to see your point that the pair-bonding mechanism hasn't been broken. A totally non-negotiable element of the pair in my book is complete exclusivity.
I'm not arguing the way we live our life is the way everyone should live theirs.
Just pointing out that this thread is echoing a false dichotomy of "many partners, no long term partnership" or "long term partnership, one partner". There is a third option, for people who want it.
Sure, I guess. In my view some are way too lax, others way too controlling. The fact the some fall into one extreme doesn't discount those that fall into the other.
Data sure does lie if you interpret data selectively. If the alternative to a divorce is an unhappy marriage, then divorce can produce better outcomes than staying together. Just because people are divorced doesn't mean they're unhappy, and optimizing for marriage rather than happiness would be foolish.
Furthermore, individuals getting divorced have a disproportionate effect on the marriage rate, because, obviously, they have strictly more marriages (and (one expects) more partners) than the people who haven't been divorced.
Not that I'm agreeing or disagreeing with you but I'm curious when you were together with the previous partner (lets say No. 22) did you also love them more than anyone else before (No. 21)?
Survivor bias is real. Kind of like some people can have unlimited access to gaming as a teenager and are fine, while others disappear from society for decades. Those that ‘survive’ have no qualms with gaming.
This is so true for me. I was with too many people before marrying my wife (a few weeks ago). The decision to get married was really difficult for me, I had to force myself, because I knew that I could sit around just dating different people forever. She has had 0 partners before me and it was the easiest decision in the world for her. If I could go back in time I would do it differently, I would pick a partner earlier and not worry so much about being with different people. I dated some amazing people that would have made incredible lifelong partners, but never married them because I "wasn't ready", when in fact it would have been nice going through major life stages and events with one partner to share in the ups and downs.
I definitely did notice that the more people I was with the less interested I was becoming in actually settling down.
Adding my similar experience to the mix. I don’t know my number, but I can tell for a fact that the girls who I deeply felt for are in the distant past, and the last dozens have all been some critical evaluation process of the person’s pros and cons in comparison to all the ones before. I hate it.
I am happily with someone way less experienced than me now, and I believe I can settle down with her now. I trust my ability to be done with the whole trying to one up on the last one now. If I had to only date people with similar pasts to mine, I most likely wouldn’t be able to trust them, however.
I agree. I was truly enamored with some of my high school-era paramours. After that, it really became a “is this person more of a benefit than a pain in the arse” calculation.
You’d be surprised how few people manage to come out on the positive end after you’ve known them for a few weeks.
Sure, I'll concede that something is going on, but I'll contend that it's less the number and more what led to the number. At the extremes it probably makes it more likely that smoke does indeed indicate fire. Ops post makes no indication that's what he was getting at and tries to pass off his opinions as some fact of human nature.
Having had a high number of partners means one thing: you have options. Might lead to a lower tolerance for bad relationships, which is a good thing IMO. If two people bond tightly depends on their willingness and emotional maturity i'd say. Fixating on a number seems redudutionist.
> In our sample, only 23 percent of the individuals who got married over the course of the study had had sex solely with the person they married. That minority of men and women reported higher marital quality than those who had had sex with other partners prior to marriage. We further found that the more sexual partners a woman had had before marriage, the less happy she reported her marriage to be. This association was not statistically significant for men.
> We investigated sex differences in shoulder to hip ratios (SHR) and waist to hip ratios (WHR), and their relationships to different features of sexual behavior. Males with high SHR and females with low WHR reported sexual intercourse at an earlier age, more sexual partners, more extra-pair copulations (EPC), and having engaged in more instances of intercourse with people who were involved in another relationship (i.e., having themselves been EPC partners). The predictive value of these morphological features was highly sex-specific.
> Past sexual promiscuity and sexual fantasies (Predictions 10 and 11). In both contexts, a partner’s concealed past sexual promiscuity (promiscuity) was rated as one of the more upsetting forms of deception (about 1 SD above the overall mean). Ratings did not differ by sex (ps > .05), failing to support Prediction 10. Prediction 11 was supported in the long term, with men’s ratings of a partner’s concealed sexual fantasies about others (sexual fantasy) relatively higher than women’s. There was no significant sex difference in the short term (p > .05). These results mirror those observed for sexual infidelity and flirtation and further suggest that the risk of cuckoldry constitutes a potent form of strategic interference for men in the long-term mating context.
A high number of previous sexual partners is a proxy for 'highly attractive' - people who are hot get partners more easily. It's likely that someone who is hot is going to be more willing to leave a relationship that they're unhappy in because they'll be confident they can find a new partner. Someone who is less attractive (or considers themselves less attractive) will stay in a bad relationship so long as it's better than being on their own.
I would argue that means the person who has had more sexual partners makes a better spouse. No one wants to be stuck in a relationship with someone who's unhappy but unwilling to let go. That's toxic af.
1. Conservative think-tank, there's a lot missing from their analysis - "women who married as virgins had the lowest divorce rates by far." - this could be explained by things like the coercive social situation they found themselves in.
People who have more relationship experience can recognize when a relationship isn't living up to what it could be, unexperienced people are just ignorant. It's hard for the grass to always be greener when you live in a windowless box.
Attractive people fuck, news at 11.
People get jealous/insecure when they feel like they're not living up to their partner's experiences/expectations. This is totally a HUGE problem, and also people should never eat any fancy or exotic food because then they'll be disappointed they can't afford to eat it all the time and affordable food has been ruined forever.
If you report being satisfied with your relationship to a third party because you think all relationships are like your current relationship and you don't see its dysfunctions, are you really more happy, or just more ignorant?
It's definitely not that black and white, because they're not directly measuring people's happiness, they're asking them to self-report their relationship satisfaction.
If I had a mediocre partner but I thought that was just how relationships were, I'd probably report being "satisfied" with them, even as I wished relationships weren't such frustrating things. If I thought marriage was an unbreakable bond I'd probably also avoid admitting I was dissatisfied with my partner to anyone (even myself!) as a coping mechanism as well.
The opposite could also be true, that people avoid admitting regret over their promiscuous past by convincing themselves that the "experience" makes them better judges of the quality of their relationships
Do you deny that there are widely accepted traits that are associated with attractiveness?
You joined a conversation about promiscuity, sex, and marriage, and calling anyone with a perspective you disagree with an incel is extremely childish and against our guidelines.
Sure, there are widely accepted traits that are associated with attractiveness. Where did I say that is not the case?
Where did I call anyone with a perspective I disagree with an incel?
I literally said that this reads like something that one would find in an incel forum, and compared the idea that specific measurements of the human body being deterministic of their behavior with debunked science of Phrenology.
I think you're reading too much into my perspective and what I agree, or disagree, with.
Unless you cite a study, this is just male fear psychology. You can absolutely find love no matter how many partners you’ve had so long as you both agree on what your relationship is and monogamy and things like that. Your fear is that if she’s had more partners than you then she’ll just leave you or is “unpairable” is sex shaming. The reasons you failed to state are non-tangible male-ego think.
Come on. You can't demand that the other person cite a study in support of their argument and then just blithely throw around a lot of bald assertions and accusations.
There's something basic and physical about this. Your first time involves levels of adrenaline and god-knows what other hormones that leave you shaking like you're having a fucking seizure. Your body does things it has never done before or since. When you're older, a sneeze is a bigger deal. This shit rewires your brain in serious ways.
Nobody disputes, that if they ship you off to 'Nam, and your body gears up into crazy levels of fight-or-flight, then when you get back you might just have a severe reaction whenever the fireworks go off on the Fourth of July.
Nobody disputes, that if you give birth to a child -- your child -- then you will be overcome with love, with emotion, with levels of oxytocin you have never experienced before in your life. Nobody disputes either that this is real, or that negative hangover effects like postpartum depression are also possible and serious.
I'm not saying this to be a prude. In fact, I think there's something bizarrely sterile and sexless about many things in our society.
But still, I think it is a mistake to trivialize things that are not trivial.
