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HikingOut, that makes perfect sense to me.

So only a "0" woman is precious to men, but women shouldn't expect a "0," "low" will suffice as their bar for "precious"?

I prefer to think that the women's side of the equation goes "high is red flag."

This is only observations I have made, which are borne out by data. Not a call for behavior changes or idealization-- I don't care for any of that.

[This message edited by Sunspot at 1:52 PM, August 17th (Monday)]

"low" will suffice as their bar for "precious"?

My bar for precious is, did he treat his previous partners with care and respect - whether the relationship was one night or ten years?

My bar for precious is, did he treat his previous partners with care and respect - whether the relationship was one night or ten years?

Ultimately, this works out to the same thing as "low."

I strongly disagree, sunspot.

RIO - you used shaming in your post 4 times. I never said anything about shaming either gender. Standing up for yourself or speaking your truth on your worldviews (or preferences for that matter) is not equal to shaming. Whether it's with the dudes in the office or with your spouse.

I used to really suck at that and learned some hard personal lessons for not being brave or vulnerable enough to express myself.

But to GoldenR's original post:

This is why I think couples should be aware of their partner's sexual history. Figure out if there's any dealbreakers before you get serious.

Absolutely if you need that, but as many other threads in the past have revealed - I suppose you might have to let go of the outcome if # of partners or past sexual preferences that have now changed are a dealbreaker. Just like details of an affair - there really are some people who don't want to know that stuff.

I would add I much prefer to know someone's relationship history - why long-term ones ended or what kind of emotional baggage might be tied up in there.

The idea of "settling" in relationships for me has always been a strange one. Like I should aim to be punching in a higher weight class of...what exactly? A list of certain checkboxes and preferences? (As some have mentioned for a straight woman's list: earning potential, abs, - whatever). If I were to do that I suppose I'd have some things in there as a starting point, but I'd hate to outright eliminate someone who has one item in the No column on the pre-screen. And what kind of guarantee do I get with that in a long-term partnership? I'm more interested in compatibility. Especially with things like emotional maturity and morals.

As for settling - underneath the now silver/gray/white hair, SO was apparently at one time a hair color I said I would never ever date back when I was like...18.

If there are in fact scads of studies showing that women with a high count are more likely to divorce, I still don't see this as a bad thing. A great many people feel stuck in bad marriages. If having more experience gives you the confidence to say "no, my life is worth more than this" and leave, then I applaud this societal change. We can also afford to leave more often nowadays.

See, here's the thing...some of you may think that these changes in women are temporary. That all we need is a good apocalypse situation to put things back "right". You know, get us back in our places where we'll supposedly be happier doing what we "naturally" do. I would argue that men are getting the more real version of women now that we aren't dependent upon you for our next meal. Thanks to modern times and technology, we get to be fully-actualized human beings and can no longer so easily be forced into specific roles. There aren't so many prison bars on our choices anymore. If you can't survive without getting married to a man, then you'll probably pretend to be whateverthefuck you need to pretend to get married to a man. That is not a problem anymore. My daughter does not ever need to get married if she doesn't want to. She has all of the options to take care of herself by herself if she wants to. She won't be stuck in an abusive marriage because women can't get decent jobs. She won't be stuck in an abusive marriage because she'd be socially ostracised for leaving.

Ultimately, this works out to the same thing as "low."

Not necessarily. Was he a party guy in college and sleeping with a different woman three times a week, then met one and married and was faithful to her for 15 years? IMHO, that's valid for showing he loved and cared about his SO for a significant amount of time, regardless of the fact that his overall number might be high.

Now, was the guy in his 40's and sleeping with three different women a week a year ago? That is entirely different. That's why it is really important to contextualize this discussion I think.

As to the OP - speaking only for myself as a woman - I get the sense that men weight the sex aspect far more heavily than women do. My xwh wasn't the best I have had physically. But for me, the connection, love, etc made it more meaningful by far. For me anyways, there's a lot more than just sex to base a relationship on. So even though he wasn't the 'best', I did not feel at all like I 'settled' for him. Now... the cheating?? yeah, there I do feel like I settled for someone who didn't treat me the right way. But that feeling only came with hindsight really.

I said earlier that this is the ideal, and the closer you can get to that ideal, the better off everyone would be.

That said, women don't have the "virginity" longing that men do, for primal reasons.

My main issue with this thread is there seem to be a lot of pied pipers saying "nah, party down, won't hurt you one bit!" It's just not true, statistically.

Depends upon what your life goal is. If marriage is the be-all end-all everything 100% most important thing about being alive, then I see why you'd worry about this.

Marriage can be the most beautiful thing in the world. It can also be hell on earth. I'm more concerned with being happy within myself, which means being authentically myself. That authentic me was not ever a blushing virgin. Of course I was a virgin at one time, but I didn't have any romantic notions over it even then. I don't require marriage to be happy, never did. I am profoundly grateful to live in a time when I don't need to define myself by whomever I do or don't marry.

Ultimately what you are probably getting at albeit through the language of chauvinism ( but all my friends say so) is that both people should have respect for each others values

Good luck getting a woman to respect misogyny - losing strategy you have on your hands there

The being "a highly sexual" woman in the affair is really part of that cartoon version of yourself. That you will be more worthwhile as that role than who you are when you are being authentic in your sexuality.

How does one tell the "cartoon version" from the woman who just really likes to have sex and wants to have a ONS for FWB situation? That is the crux of my personal dilemma, I see no way to disaggregate the 2 groups, the dysfunctional "sex for kibbles" group from the "I just want to have sex" group. They appear to say/do/act the same way. I think if you told the OM in my W's A she did it "just for kibbles" he'd laugh in your face, I saw the messages, if I'd gotten them instead of him, I would have thought "good god, this woman is holy crap DTF". I'm not saying that there aren't women out there who are, in fact, just looking for sex, we see them often chime in on threads like this; that's no my issue. It's how to separate group A from B. If I could figure that out, I think that might be the "end" of my healing journey, but.. I just don't think there's an answer, especially not when you get the pleasure of reading 1000's of TXT messages from your W to the AP; if that's "just for kibbles" and not "dying to get f**ked", I have no idea what the latter looks like, not even a clue.

RIO - you used shaming in your post 4 times. I never said anything about shaming either gender. Standing up for yourself or speaking your truth on your worldviews (or preferences for that matter) is not equal to shaming. Whether it's with the dudes in the office or with your spouse.

I wasn't speaking to you personally, but a lot of the posts on here are "men need to grow up" or "stop trying to control woman" or some other message about this being "wrong" for a man to state as a sexual preference. That's what I see as "shaming", "he has no right to be upset at high partner count".. Well, yes, he does; if it's important to him, it's important to him. No amount of "that shouldn't matter dude" from me will change anything, there are valid reasons why he might feel that way and it's just not my (or anyone's really) place to tell him his preferences aren't valid.

If there are in fact scads of studies showing that women with a high count are more likely to divorce, I still don't see this as a bad thing. A great many people feel stuck in bad marriages. If having more experience gives you the confidence to say "no, my life is worth more than this" and leave, then I applaud this societal change. We can also afford to leave more often nowadays.

There are at least "some" studies showing that. And while I see how you might feel that way it's equally valid for a man to say "nope, D risk is too high" and next someone for that reason. D usually turns out really bad for men, so it's kind of understandable that someone like me would view it differently; I know enough people who've been through it to know "I do NOT want to do this" and would try to select partners with lower D risk for marriage. Now, all that said, I did exactly that, married someone with "low D risk" and wound up cheated on, so.. There you go. But it in no way invalidates the statistics to show outliers, I'm one of them, as I'm sure a lot of posters on here are as well, it's still statistically risker to marry someone with a higher partner count.

See, here's the thing...some of you may think that these changes in women are temporary. That all we need is a good apocalypse situation to put things back "right". You know, get us back in our places where we'll supposedly be happier doing what we "naturally" do. I would argue that men are getting the more real version of women now that we aren't dependent upon you for our next meal.

I agree, I don't think things are going "back". What I do think is that we're in the "transition period" right now. And the future I see ahead, well, it's muddied. Marriage is a dying institution, births have fallen off the map low in most first world countries, men and women have both weaponized against one another to a degree that shocks me, even today, when I read hard core feminist or "red pill" message boards. The future, right now, looks like "apart" more than together. And that's before we get some "sex topping" technologies (things so much better than sex physically that actually having sex loses appeal) before prostitution is legalized (IMHO, only a matter of time) which will just further exacerbate the situation.

IMHO, without going full "tin foil hat", if I'm trying to control the world population without draconian measures, this is how I do it. And the results are impressive, most 1st world countries are either below or FAR below replacement rate. I have no idea if this is the agenda or not, but if it is, I can't think of a better way to get it done; pile people into cities so our "no room" mechanism is activated, push a message of casual sex and transient marriage, get both people to work so nobody has time for children, drive the cost of living through the roof.. Volia. Perfect way to tamp down out of control population growth without a single shot fired.

How does one tell the "cartoon version" from the woman who just really likes to have sex and wants to have a ONS for FWB situation?

She or he is having an affair.

I think you might find you can find an inauthentic person even in a dating situation, or ONS situation. Sure, those exist of course. I think most people who are past 25 know themselves well enough to say "I am looking for a relationship" or "I am looking for no strings attached" or FWB or whatever.

But, in an affair situation when both people are married to someone else and getting the lion's share of their needs met by someone else, then you have to say what the heck is this person doing here? They are using you for something, right? They are married to someone else so they are only equipped to invest very little in you.

So, in about 100 percent of affairs that do not involve a sex worker, but two married people...the answer is always going to be 100 percent of the time.

Between 2 consenting adults who are not married and are free to do what they want? The percentage drops significantly. They have infinitely more choices of who they see and sleep with because they don't have to look specifically for someone who is scuzzy like they are. I have never had sex for "kibbles" in any other scenario outside of the affair.

And, I would have not acted in some of the ways I did if I was trying to build something real with someone or wasn't really trying to hold them in place. Or if I was not trying to pretend to be someone I wasn't. I would have very little motivation to do that in a non-affair situation.

but a lot of the posts on here are "men need to grow up" or "stop trying to control woman" or some other message about this being "wrong" for a man to state as a sexual preference.

The issue I personally see is that IMHO you aren't stating this is a 'preference' specific to yourself Rio. You and others are insinuating that a woman who has a sexual history with more than 2 partners is seen as defective in some way, or unmarry-able, or whatever on a universal/societal level. If YOUR personal preference is a virgin, then say that is your preference and don't say or imply that 'men feel this way'.

I get that there is a slice of the population (the very religious as an easy example) that place a high value on 'purity' and no there isn't inherently anything wrong with that. Nothing wrong with people being attracted to a certain type be that physical, number of previous partners, or anything really.

Just to be clear conservatism means a belief numbers should be low , misogyny is the belief the womans number needs to be different.

If the cheater desires someone different - whether thats one guy or two hundred of any hue /trans / gay etc thats all a side issue noone is asking anyone to accept that obviously ( in ref to westway )

I may have skipped some posts - did anyone conflate these issues

[This message edited by siracha at 2:58 PM, August 17th (Monday)]

The issue I personally see is that IMHO you aren't stating this is a 'preference' specific to yourself Rio. You and others are insinuating that a woman who has a sexual history with more than 2 partners is seen as defective in some way, or unmarry-able, or whatever on a universal/societal level. If YOUR personal preference is a virgin, then say that is your preference and don't say or imply that 'men feel this way'.

I know I've never said "defective". I've also said, several time, this IS NOT my preference, it never was. I liked dating women with a lot of sexual experience because a lot of my reason for dating was to have bang up experiences in bed, and more experienced women were often "better at it" than less.

I have implied that "men feel this way" because that's what statistics/articles/my personal experience with other men indicates, NOT because I personally feel this way. I know men who absolutely feel this way though, and I know that I'm the outlier here; most men I know saw a high partner count as a problem. And honestly, we wouldn't even be having this conversation if it wasn't "a thing". If I started a thread about how men "often prefer women who are over 6'5" tall" we wouldn't have a discussion because we all know that's not even close to generally true. The reason a thread like this gets life is because we all "kind of know" there's something to this.

I get that there is a slice of the population (the very religious as an easy example) that place a high value on 'purity' and no there isn't inherently anything wrong with that. Nothing wrong with people being attracted to a certain type be that physical, number of previous partners, or anything really.

Well, we certainly agree here. But I also think we're sidestepping the real issue here. Nobody cares is "a few" men prefer "very religious" women, and nobody would argue about that. The reason this touches off a nerve is because it's a pretty common desire/want for men. I guess a reasonable reversal would be women preferring to date men with good jobs, nobody would give a hoot if it was "a few" women, however, when "lots of" or "most" women put the "gotta have a good job" hurdle out there, men get pissed because it's something they "have to do" to have access to a broader dating pool. It "controls" male behavior, and that grates on our sense of fairness/freedom of choice.

The only argument I made is that "0" is precious and a good tell to men who are seeking marriage and "low" is precious and a good tell to women who are seeking marriage.

There's pretty much no way I am ever going to tell my son that 0 is far more precious when seeking a marriage partner. Virgin does NOT equal good person.

Deleted... I feel this branch of discussion is adding pointless pain to an already painful place, and I don't want to do that.

[This message edited by Sunspot at 3:20 PM, August 17th (Monday)]

I don't believe for one minute the increase in divorces by women have anything to do with the number of their previous sexual partners. Last I heard there wasn't a question in the divorce papers that actually asked that question, at least not in the country where I live!

No what happened, at least in the UK is the divorce laws changed just before the second world war to make it slightly more equitable for women who wanted a divorce. In real terms however the shame involved stopped women, and indeed a lot of men, actually choosing this option no matter how much they would want it.

It's only relatively recently that women have realised there's no shame in leaving a bad marriage and taking action to do so, this in tandem with divorce becoming more accessible to both men and women.

An other factor is that often men will leave to their wives to file. It's a bid to be seen as the good guy. You can see examples by reading divorce forums here and other boards.

Look, if a guy with a low count didn't want to be with me because of my number, I get it. He should try to find someone whose views are more compatible with his. I still think it's a crock of shit that he gets to have "low" numbers but his potential partners are of higher value at "0," but oh well, I'm automatically disqualified from his dating pool anyway. Good thing we would find that out right away.

If a guy with a high count didn't want to be with me because I have a "high" count (don't even get me started on the discrepancy between what is considered "high" for men vs. women), that's no skin off my back, as long as he's honest about it. I've known many guys who future-promise and make things seem like a relationship when they aren't, just to get the woman into bed, and that's fucked.

But if the convo went "Hey, my number is ~30, what about you?" and he said "Gotcha, here's the thing, I'm DTF, but I can't do a relationship with someone with that high of a number," cool. I can decide if I am still DTF with him knowing that, or if I would rather pass. I don't need to convince a guy that I'm "worth it", I'll walk my fine ass out the door and let him carry on being his hypocritical self. At least I had agency in the matter.

I just feel sorry for the low count woman who ends up marrying one of these guys. The "high count is fine for me, but not for you" guys. To me, she is the one who settled.

Not because he has a high count and she wishes he had a low one.

No, she settled for a hypocrite. And in what other myriad of ways will that hypocrisy rear its ugly head throughout that marriage? I'm willing to bet that it doesn't just stop at high vs. low count.

men get pissed because it's something they "have to do" to have access to a broader dating pool. It "controls" male behavior, and that grates on our sense of fairness/freedom of choice.

Gee that is really frustrating and irritating when a whole other group of folks of the opposite gender try to control you and limit your choices, isn't it... not that me and my ovaries and my birth control would know anything about that of course.