Vaniver comments on The peril of ignoring emotions - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Swimmer963 03 April 2011 05:15PM

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Comment author: Alicorn 03 April 2011 10:04:53PM 3 points [-]

Supposing for the sake of inquiry that Sally is ambivalent about or indifferent to the presence or absence of sex in her relationships (but suitably enthusiastic once it's been introduced), and just wants to minimize the probability that she'll be dumped, what should she do? It's hardly unheard of for women to be dumped for not putting out, even if the model you offer of Bob's subsequent loss of interest is accurate.

Comment author: Vaniver 03 April 2011 11:43:07PM 5 points [-]

I don't know the numbers well enough to give solid advice, and the time-scale over which she doesn't want to be dumped seems relevant. One of the factors of modern culture is that young people regularly change almost all of their social set- high school students going to college, college students going into the workforce, etc. - and many relationships don't survive that transition. I don't know how to plan around that. In absence of that, I suspect the optimal strategy for life-long relationships is sexual reserve (because the costs of getting a relationship to medium-term are so high).

Actually, something even more relevant than "not getting dumped" might be "percentage of pre-menopause time spent coupled." Putting out seems like a good strategy for maximizing the second variable, or at least ensuring it doesn't get too low. I would not be surprised if the timescale necessary to find a guy willing to wait 90 days to have sex is measured in years in some milieus, and that involves a lot of guys losing interest.