I think the proper comparison is to see how satisfied or not men of similar ages are who have no relationship at all, and are single. We don't have that information.
I know plenty of single guys in their 40s and up who basically NEVER have sex...for months or years sometimes. Pretty sure they're not satisfied either.
Isn't it possible that satisfaction with your sex life just gets worse over time, for most people, after their 30s? Would that not be an unsurprising result? How many people even expect to still have sex after a certain age (55? 65? 75?). I would guess most of your respondents who have been relationships for more than 12 years are much older. And it is a very, very rare person indeed who thinks they are having hotter and more satisfying sex at 55 than at 30. I mean seriously, that's actually a ridiculous idea.
I would imagine if you polled people about their satisfaction with their financial lives, you would get almost opposite results, with older people and people in longer relationships being more satisfied than younger people and those in short relationships.
There's a time for everything.
Oh, and the question I've wondered about with all of this data is what's the correlation with how good looking respondents are on all of these? I thought I remembered you asking that question. Definitely would guess there's a strong correlation between being attractive and cheating.
People tend to have the capacity to learn attraction. It could be possible that some individuals will find more fulfillment over time as they become the magnet for their desires.
>How many people even expect to still have sex after a certain age (55? 65? 75?)
key point for me to think about. I am not expecting that I will have sex as often, makes sense, but not sure that my body/mind will be happy about that.
My biggest thought here is that your 20% audience selection from porn is a little understated.
First, your close porn followers have continued following you for years after major porn activity, and stuck through your detailed discussions of sex work, invitations to kink parties/dates, etc.
Second, even if people don't know you from those sources originally, because your content is so sex focussed, it's almost like 80% of us know you from porn just based on the last few surveys.
While "everyone" uses porn, to engage on it in this level I would expect a higher level of focus than general population - we are the real porn experts at this point. And we real porn experts know about being poly and kinks and extramarital affairs.
I know this is the usual "not a random sample" issue, but it's still interesting.
'Often when people ask why I’m popular, others respond, “tits.” And maybe this is partially true, but it immediately kicks the legs out from under the serious stuff I’ve done'
Not necessarily. At least among serious people, your serious stuff will be evaluated by its merits. Like, here you have a big relationships survey, and it's cool and serious. If you respond to the valid critical comments above with your reasoning or further analysis, this will be even cooler and more serious. For example, the one about the confounding by age (i.e., how much of this 'longer relationships suck' is actually explained by 'being old sucks') and another about comparing monogamous men's sex lives with what single men usually face in this respect.
Meanwhile, enjoying your tits and fucking is fun and refreshing, which lets you do more serious stuff, so it should be a win-win, really:)
I would be interesting exploring what 'being old sucks' means. I just wrote my post below and then saw your comment. problem is our bodies age, but our mind/desires don't really, at least that is what it feels like. in the end it is also a problem how much we feel like what we imagine should be real. A young person may be unhappy because they imagine something better than it is as well.
Firstly the sample size is terrible: 680 males and 142 females
Thats not balanced at all, but lets just go with it for now.
From these graphs its pretty clear that women are not pulling their weight to make men satisfied or happy but men are doing sufficiently well at achieving it for their woman.
This does not surprise me with the high levels of selfish attitudes women have these days where they just think they need to look pretty and thats all they have to do. Where as men have to have every attribute under the sun, probably rarely get compliments and pay for all the dates, initiate all the sex etc. Its exhausting for men for little reward other than solving their loneliness most likely.
Then they wonder why men feel less fulfilled, watch more porn, desire other women and get bored of the relationship as time goes on. And even then its still women who end the relationships most of the time - most likely because the guy gives up but doesn't end the relationship because he would be lonely.
Everyone focussing on "men are cheaters, men are bad". Maybe women are just not good partners so men step out to get their needs met....
It's no surprise men cheat more, but the graphs also show men are less satisfied sexually than women, more men report their partner doesn't satisfy them over time, the rate of sex frequency decreases over time which is probably the biggest factor of the lot for men.
Another graph shows women feel more physically desired than men do by their partners, No wonder they want to cheat and watch porn.
We don't have data for previous periods of time, and it would be pretty easy to tell a story from the perspective of stereotypical American 1950s (did that ever really exist?) about how these graphs aren't surprising because of puritanical attitudes towards sex because society thought that blowjobs were scandalous (was that ever really true?!)
Isn't it easier to anecdotally point at the difference in raw sex drive between males and females? The data here doesn't lay that out, but we all know that's true. Personally, I don't think we should be blaming women for not doing enough, when it seems to be more of a built in biological lower overall sex drive in female humans.
If the data were collected, I think you'd be more likely to peg sexual dissatisfaction with the rise in obesity over the past 30 years, and than mythical female selfishness :P
Weird how when women report dissatisfaction its because men are selfish or not good in bed but when its the reverse we say oh its just natural biology. If women don't want men to cheat they go to meet men's needs - same if they want men to watch less porn. Either that or they need to stop complaining about male nature.
Thinking about why guys might be more unhappy. they are more visually stimulated, so its easier to be tempted in other directions? I am also wondering how easy it is in reality to see your older wife just as pretty as the younger lady. I would say it pretty difficult turn of whatever switch in me that says the younger lady is prettier. so in comparison I am doomed to be 'unhappy' to some degree in that sense.
sure current culture has just made this worse with all the visual stimulation you can get easily, but still that inherent switch is still there IMO.
So, to me (male), pretty does not necessarily mean best in bed. To get aroused, I need certain visual features, but they are nowhere near the common beauty ideal, and in some ways contradict it (for example, I like slightly chubbier women, no makeup, etc.). At the same time, there are many qualities other than looks that make for a good sex life, like playfulness, open-mindedness, energy level, compatible attitude towards domination, and so on. All of this may or may not be in a certain woman at the outset, and may or may not disappear with age. At this point (married for 9 years, both age 36), I find sex frequency far more of a bottleneck than my wife's attractiveness. Now that we're past a couple of childbirth cycles, which put a certain stress on our sex life, I'm happier with it than ever. Only time will tell what comes next. But in any case, the frequency is probably important to most men; just recently a friend of mine divorsed because of not enough sex. So if a person reading this sets up an erotic date with their partner, the world will be a happier place:)
>So if a person reading this sets up an erotic date with their partner, the world will be a happier place:)
agreed, now I just need someone to look after the kids :P
> But in any case, the frequency is probably important to most men
I wonder what the mere presence of Testosterone does to this equation. And like going to the beach does not really help the situation for example. I don't think that would change a womans mood, although that is an unqualified statement :P
> agreed, now I just need someone to look after the kids :P
I now consider kindergartens and schools some of the best inventions of humanity, exactly for this reason:) When kids are too young for this though, it's a challenge. Unless one hires a full-time babysitter, I presume (haven't done it). Otherwise, even if you arrange for someone to babysit occasionally, you might not be in the mood or something, and so have no or unexciting sex, and then it feels like the mutual sex drive is slowly dying out forever. The good news is that the 'forever' part may be false:)
> I wonder what the mere presence of Testosterone does to this equation. And like going to the beach does not really help the situation for example.
Yeah, beaches can be overwhelming at times) I've noticed that strength training also amps up the drive a lot. But anyways, the average level of desire is there, beaches or not. I don't find this bad though). Unlike my friend who complains about his frequent and long bursts of crazy sex drive that prevent him from working productively, I seem to be ok with a reasonable frequency (which is though 2-3 times higher than the 'once a week' average from Aella's survey for longer relationships).
What do you mean by closer results? I took part in this survey and lived my entire life in Iran (Middle East). I'd expect similar results if it was strictly answered by Iranians. Of course only a real survey can tell!
On the other hand, the kink test would probably yield very different results. People are not familiar at all with the kink world. Kinky desires are almost entirely viewed as being sexually demented.
I believe women would report significantly less when it comes to cheating while married in ME however I think men everywhere will cheat more while married.
oh I see. Afaik cheating wife is pretty much common here. I still think the results would be similar. I even wouldn't be surprised if the gap between cheating men and cheating women is smaller.
Have you researched the existing sex research literature? I would be really interested if someone could compare and contrast this with the existing landscape of sex research, given that you have a large data set which would probably be difficult for normal university researches to achieve.
There was a great book back I read a decade or more ago called What Do Women Want by Daniel Bergner that talked about a lot of research in to female sexuality that ran counter to our conventional narratives (e.g. women are more sexually promiscuous than society admits, desire sex more than expected) and I'm pretty sure the sex research that backed that didn't have 22k data points.
Can we get a Scott Alexander overview of the sex research landscape?! Anyway, cool article, I'm curious about the polyamorous version :D
would be great to control for the age a little, e.g. to qualify this: `At around 8-10 years, males satisfaction with their sex life drops to ‘neutral’, and after that they’re (on average) more likely to be dissatisfied than satisfied. By ~16 years on, on average they’re closer to disagreeing with the statement “My partner sexually fulfills me” than agreeing with it.`
People who say they are cis give very different answers on surveys than people who say they're trans. Totally independent of ideology, I just want to capture differences in the data.
You can tell by the language of the person whether they are taking part in a discussion or being a bully. Discussion goes with reason. Bullying goes with calling names and insults.
You can tell by the language of the person whether they are taking part in a discussion or being a bully. Discussion goes with reason. Bullying goes with calling names and insults.
You disappoint me Gerard. No one is forcing you to not be yourself. Why would you be against someone else calling themselves whatever the f* they want? What is it of your business to dictate to others how they should present themselves?
Is it so difficult to call your self "cis man" instead of a "man"? The name do you no harm whatsoever. But it helps millions find a grounding for their identity. All you're saying by your comment is that you don't want to accept that there are people who see the genders different than you. Be less self centered would you?
I was trying to highlight how people might feel uncomfortable being put into ideological boxes they don't subscribe to.
I didn't mind just marking "cis" because it is really jsut a name tag. But the other poster is absolutely right that the current trans movement is a lot of nonsense that is all excited about 50s style gender essentialism and "gender souls". Both of which are bad and harmful ideas, and should be resisted.
Honestly I feel like our social disputes have become shallow. In the sense that people do not really look for a reason to support an agenda. I kind of had a similar experience to yours. I know about the trans and non-binary but when I saw "cis" in the survey, I had to look it up to figure out what I should check there.
I see it more like allowing people to express themselves however they want to and I support this idea. As soon as I feel like this will lead to limitations in me expressing my identity, then I would be very much against it.
But I see your point. And I agree if something becomes mainstream then the organizer must be very cautious on the terms they use to not impose anything on others. In the case of this survey, I think this it not to that scale and if someone doesn't relate, they can simply ignore it. Still, I think the comment section is an ideal place to talk about this concern.
My reaction to Gerard was due to the insulting/disrespectful nature of his comment. I sort of insulted him back to give him a taste of his own medicine. I have learnt to counter extremism no matter I agree with the cause or not.
Extremism being trying to further your agenda not through reasoning to convince others, but through means of intimidation. You can be ISIS taking up arms, or disrespecting others just because of what they believe in. The mindset is, you either agree with me or I cancel you one way or another.
Sure. No one asked you to take part in the survey. Still you felt like it is appropriate to express disappointment in it. I saw only valid that I express my disappointment in you. You had to do you before you decided to leave a comment. I am doing me.
Oh, you took her invitation to take part in the survey too personal my dear! It's not like you received a direct message from her. What you're saying basically is, just because some exists in the public, everyone are allowed to criticize them.
On a real note. When you want to express your opinion you are better of not insulting others. You could say I didn't take part because the survey goes against my values. But you made insults. That is what prompts someone like me who has dealt a lot with extremists to stand up to you. You can disagree and believe in anything you want. But as soon as you decide to act in an intimidating way, you are not on the right side anymore. You are being a dictator. Simply because you want what you want to go not through reasoning but through intimidation.
You could say I think this new gender thing is false because of this of that. Instead you are refraining from being reasonable to being insulting and repeatedly saying sex horoscopism and such. Like calling other's beliefs names, makes those beliefs wrong or something?
Think about what I said. I know it's difficult now because I challenged you. But you can always be sure you can never get your way by intimidating others. You will only hurt others instead of helping them.
I think the proper comparison is to see how satisfied or not men of similar ages are who have no relationship at all, and are single. We don't have that information.
I know plenty of single guys in their 40s and up who basically NEVER have sex...for months or years sometimes. Pretty sure they're not satisfied either.
Isn't it possible that satisfaction with your sex life just gets worse over time, for most people, after their 30s? Would that not be an unsurprising result? How many people even expect to still have sex after a certain age (55? 65? 75?). I would guess most of your respondents who have been relationships for more than 12 years are much older. And it is a very, very rare person indeed who thinks they are having hotter and more satisfying sex at 55 than at 30. I mean seriously, that's actually a ridiculous idea.
I would imagine if you polled people about their satisfaction with their financial lives, you would get almost opposite results, with older people and people in longer relationships being more satisfied than younger people and those in short relationships.
There's a time for everything.
Oh, and the question I've wondered about with all of this data is what's the correlation with how good looking respondents are on all of these? I thought I remembered you asking that question. Definitely would guess there's a strong correlation between being attractive and cheating.
People tend to have the capacity to learn attraction. It could be possible that some individuals will find more fulfillment over time as they become the magnet for their desires.
>How many people even expect to still have sex after a certain age (55? 65? 75?)
key point for me to think about. I am not expecting that I will have sex as often, makes sense, but not sure that my body/mind will be happy about that.
My biggest thought here is that your 20% audience selection from porn is a little understated.
First, your close porn followers have continued following you for years after major porn activity, and stuck through your detailed discussions of sex work, invitations to kink parties/dates, etc.
Second, even if people don't know you from those sources originally, because your content is so sex focussed, it's almost like 80% of us know you from porn just based on the last few surveys.
While "everyone" uses porn, to engage on it in this level I would expect a higher level of focus than general population - we are the real porn experts at this point. And we real porn experts know about being poly and kinks and extramarital affairs.
I know this is the usual "not a random sample" issue, but it's still interesting.
So, in your other post, you are saying:
'Often when people ask why I’m popular, others respond, “tits.” And maybe this is partially true, but it immediately kicks the legs out from under the serious stuff I’ve done'
Not necessarily. At least among serious people, your serious stuff will be evaluated by its merits. Like, here you have a big relationships survey, and it's cool and serious. If you respond to the valid critical comments above with your reasoning or further analysis, this will be even cooler and more serious. For example, the one about the confounding by age (i.e., how much of this 'longer relationships suck' is actually explained by 'being old sucks') and another about comparing monogamous men's sex lives with what single men usually face in this respect.
Meanwhile, enjoying your tits and fucking is fun and refreshing, which lets you do more serious stuff, so it should be a win-win, really:)
I would be interesting exploring what 'being old sucks' means. I just wrote my post below and then saw your comment. problem is our bodies age, but our mind/desires don't really, at least that is what it feels like. in the end it is also a problem how much we feel like what we imagine should be real. A young person may be unhappy because they imagine something better than it is as well.
Firstly the sample size is terrible: 680 males and 142 females
Thats not balanced at all, but lets just go with it for now.
From these graphs its pretty clear that women are not pulling their weight to make men satisfied or happy but men are doing sufficiently well at achieving it for their woman.
This does not surprise me with the high levels of selfish attitudes women have these days where they just think they need to look pretty and thats all they have to do. Where as men have to have every attribute under the sun, probably rarely get compliments and pay for all the dates, initiate all the sex etc. Its exhausting for men for little reward other than solving their loneliness most likely.
Then they wonder why men feel less fulfilled, watch more porn, desire other women and get bored of the relationship as time goes on. And even then its still women who end the relationships most of the time - most likely because the guy gives up but doesn't end the relationship because he would be lonely.
Everyone focussing on "men are cheaters, men are bad". Maybe women are just not good partners so men step out to get their needs met....
It's no surprise men cheat more, but the graphs also show men are less satisfied sexually than women, more men report their partner doesn't satisfy them over time, the rate of sex frequency decreases over time which is probably the biggest factor of the lot for men.
Another graph shows women feel more physically desired than men do by their partners, No wonder they want to cheat and watch porn.
We don't have data for previous periods of time, and it would be pretty easy to tell a story from the perspective of stereotypical American 1950s (did that ever really exist?) about how these graphs aren't surprising because of puritanical attitudes towards sex because society thought that blowjobs were scandalous (was that ever really true?!)
Isn't it easier to anecdotally point at the difference in raw sex drive between males and females? The data here doesn't lay that out, but we all know that's true. Personally, I don't think we should be blaming women for not doing enough, when it seems to be more of a built in biological lower overall sex drive in female humans.
If the data were collected, I think you'd be more likely to peg sexual dissatisfaction with the rise in obesity over the past 30 years, and than mythical female selfishness :P
Weird how when women report dissatisfaction its because men are selfish or not good in bed but when its the reverse we say oh its just natural biology. If women don't want men to cheat they go to meet men's needs - same if they want men to watch less porn. Either that or they need to stop complaining about male nature.
That's fair :) I do argue that women need to accept the natural behaviour of men. I wasn't surprised by these results at all.
Thinking about why guys might be more unhappy. they are more visually stimulated, so its easier to be tempted in other directions? I am also wondering how easy it is in reality to see your older wife just as pretty as the younger lady. I would say it pretty difficult turn of whatever switch in me that says the younger lady is prettier. so in comparison I am doomed to be 'unhappy' to some degree in that sense.
sure current culture has just made this worse with all the visual stimulation you can get easily, but still that inherent switch is still there IMO.
So, to me (male), pretty does not necessarily mean best in bed. To get aroused, I need certain visual features, but they are nowhere near the common beauty ideal, and in some ways contradict it (for example, I like slightly chubbier women, no makeup, etc.). At the same time, there are many qualities other than looks that make for a good sex life, like playfulness, open-mindedness, energy level, compatible attitude towards domination, and so on. All of this may or may not be in a certain woman at the outset, and may or may not disappear with age. At this point (married for 9 years, both age 36), I find sex frequency far more of a bottleneck than my wife's attractiveness. Now that we're past a couple of childbirth cycles, which put a certain stress on our sex life, I'm happier with it than ever. Only time will tell what comes next. But in any case, the frequency is probably important to most men; just recently a friend of mine divorsed because of not enough sex. So if a person reading this sets up an erotic date with their partner, the world will be a happier place:)
>So if a person reading this sets up an erotic date with their partner, the world will be a happier place:)
agreed, now I just need someone to look after the kids :P
> But in any case, the frequency is probably important to most men
I wonder what the mere presence of Testosterone does to this equation. And like going to the beach does not really help the situation for example. I don't think that would change a womans mood, although that is an unqualified statement :P
> agreed, now I just need someone to look after the kids :P
I now consider kindergartens and schools some of the best inventions of humanity, exactly for this reason:) When kids are too young for this though, it's a challenge. Unless one hires a full-time babysitter, I presume (haven't done it). Otherwise, even if you arrange for someone to babysit occasionally, you might not be in the mood or something, and so have no or unexciting sex, and then it feels like the mutual sex drive is slowly dying out forever. The good news is that the 'forever' part may be false:)
> I wonder what the mere presence of Testosterone does to this equation. And like going to the beach does not really help the situation for example.
Yeah, beaches can be overwhelming at times) I've noticed that strength training also amps up the drive a lot. But anyways, the average level of desire is there, beaches or not. I don't find this bad though). Unlike my friend who complains about his frequent and long bursts of crazy sex drive that prevent him from working productively, I seem to be ok with a reasonable frequency (which is though 2-3 times higher than the 'once a week' average from Aella's survey for longer relationships).
There's an old joke:
Women want everything from one man
Men want one thing from every woman
I wonder if we take this survey in Middle East or Africa would it yield closer results.
What do you mean by closer results? I took part in this survey and lived my entire life in Iran (Middle East). I'd expect similar results if it was strictly answered by Iranians. Of course only a real survey can tell!
On the other hand, the kink test would probably yield very different results. People are not familiar at all with the kink world. Kinky desires are almost entirely viewed as being sexually demented.
I believe women would report significantly less when it comes to cheating while married in ME however I think men everywhere will cheat more while married.
oh I see. Afaik cheating wife is pretty much common here. I still think the results would be similar. I even wouldn't be surprised if the gap between cheating men and cheating women is smaller.
Have you researched the existing sex research literature? I would be really interested if someone could compare and contrast this with the existing landscape of sex research, given that you have a large data set which would probably be difficult for normal university researches to achieve.
There was a great book back I read a decade or more ago called What Do Women Want by Daniel Bergner that talked about a lot of research in to female sexuality that ran counter to our conventional narratives (e.g. women are more sexually promiscuous than society admits, desire sex more than expected) and I'm pretty sure the sex research that backed that didn't have 22k data points.
Can we get a Scott Alexander overview of the sex research landscape?! Anyway, cool article, I'm curious about the polyamorous version :D
would be great to control for the age a little, e.g. to qualify this: `At around 8-10 years, males satisfaction with their sex life drops to ‘neutral’, and after that they’re (on average) more likely to be dissatisfied than satisfied. By ~16 years on, on average they’re closer to disagreeing with the statement “My partner sexually fulfills me” than agreeing with it.`
Doing God's work spreading this truth.
People who say they are cis give very different answers on surveys than people who say they're trans. Totally independent of ideology, I just want to capture differences in the data.
You can tell by the language of the person whether they are taking part in a discussion or being a bully. Discussion goes with reason. Bullying goes with calling names and insults.
Calling you 'cis' doesn't make you any less of a man. It just differentiates between you and trans men for the data.
You can tell by the language of the person whether they are taking part in a discussion or being a bully. Discussion goes with reason. Bullying goes with calling names and insults.
You disappoint me Gerard. No one is forcing you to not be yourself. Why would you be against someone else calling themselves whatever the f* they want? What is it of your business to dictate to others how they should present themselves?
Is it so difficult to call your self "cis man" instead of a "man"? The name do you no harm whatsoever. But it helps millions find a grounding for their identity. All you're saying by your comment is that you don't want to accept that there are people who see the genders different than you. Be less self centered would you?
Yashar, are you a fallen corrupted soul yearning to repent?
Or are you already graced with the loving acceptance of Jesus Christ?
Chose one!
Kind of difficult to tell if you are being sarcastic now! :D
Do I not get any other options?
I was trying to highlight how people might feel uncomfortable being put into ideological boxes they don't subscribe to.
I didn't mind just marking "cis" because it is really jsut a name tag. But the other poster is absolutely right that the current trans movement is a lot of nonsense that is all excited about 50s style gender essentialism and "gender souls". Both of which are bad and harmful ideas, and should be resisted.
Honestly I feel like our social disputes have become shallow. In the sense that people do not really look for a reason to support an agenda. I kind of had a similar experience to yours. I know about the trans and non-binary but when I saw "cis" in the survey, I had to look it up to figure out what I should check there.
I see it more like allowing people to express themselves however they want to and I support this idea. As soon as I feel like this will lead to limitations in me expressing my identity, then I would be very much against it.
But I see your point. And I agree if something becomes mainstream then the organizer must be very cautious on the terms they use to not impose anything on others. In the case of this survey, I think this it not to that scale and if someone doesn't relate, they can simply ignore it. Still, I think the comment section is an ideal place to talk about this concern.
My reaction to Gerard was due to the insulting/disrespectful nature of his comment. I sort of insulted him back to give him a taste of his own medicine. I have learnt to counter extremism no matter I agree with the cause or not.
Extremism being trying to further your agenda not through reasoning to convince others, but through means of intimidation. You can be ISIS taking up arms, or disrespecting others just because of what they believe in. The mindset is, you either agree with me or I cancel you one way or another.
Sure. No one asked you to take part in the survey. Still you felt like it is appropriate to express disappointment in it. I saw only valid that I express my disappointment in you. You had to do you before you decided to leave a comment. I am doing me.
Oh, you took her invitation to take part in the survey too personal my dear! It's not like you received a direct message from her. What you're saying basically is, just because some exists in the public, everyone are allowed to criticize them.
On a real note. When you want to express your opinion you are better of not insulting others. You could say I didn't take part because the survey goes against my values. But you made insults. That is what prompts someone like me who has dealt a lot with extremists to stand up to you. You can disagree and believe in anything you want. But as soon as you decide to act in an intimidating way, you are not on the right side anymore. You are being a dictator. Simply because you want what you want to go not through reasoning but through intimidation.
You could say I think this new gender thing is false because of this of that. Instead you are refraining from being reasonable to being insulting and repeatedly saying sex horoscopism and such. Like calling other's beliefs names, makes those beliefs wrong or something?
Think about what I said. I know it's difficult now because I challenged you. But you can always be sure you can never get your way by intimidating others. You will only hurt others instead of helping them.