Life on the Carousel

In an effort to discourage what they see as unfair competition, people like Dr. Laura will tell unmarried women something like:

 "The more sexual partners a woman has before she marries, the less she'll enjoy marital sex."

How exactly is that determined?

We can't compare people to themselves. No one person has had both experiences - having many sexual partners before marrying and having few or none before marrying. So how can anyone know?

This is how it is determined. Usually among other questions, they ask women who are or were married:

• How satisfied they are/were with their marital sex life
• How many partners they had before they married

Then, they notice that there appears to be some correlation.

Let's be clear about a few things though.

1) This is based on self reporting. People who have had few or no sex partners before their marriage have nothing for comparison. It's like giving a starving person plain rice. How happy is that person going to be with rice? Very! As far as sex, it's basically saying "I like sex" or "I'm happy with our sex life" even if they're having sex four times per year.

2) Who has few or no sex partners before marrying? Very religious people. Many of them consider it a sin or even a "negative confession" to say that they are anything less than thrilled with their marital sex life. Also, some unattractive women don't attract many sex partners. Of those who do marry, they're probably going to be happy.

3) There are many women who saved sex for marriage and then had a terrible sex life.

4) There are women who had "many" sex partners before marriage and have a great marital sex life. They tend to be women who like sex a lot and have a high drive.

5) What people who use this tactic are advocating is that you make vows and sign a state contract with someone before finding out if you're sexually compatible. It is VERY different to have no sex at all before marrying and to get very sexual with one person before marrying them. The latter often get lumped together with the former, even though with the latter, if they realize they're not sexually compatible, they are far less likely to marry in the first place.

6) It means something that the people who use this tactic don't apply to anything else. If a woman never goes to a nice restaurant before she marries, won't that make the experience of going to one with her husband that much more special? So an unmarried woman should decline offers to go to a nice restaurant, right?

There are many women who get bored of sex. If those women have had many sex partners before they married, then they might hit that wall of boredom earlier in their marriage. Incels and some others (like Dr. Laura, "purity" purveyors) say a woman's ability to bond, and thus enjoy sex more, gets damaged more the more sex partners she has (like a piece of tape that gets reused and reused loses effectiveness). But for any individual woman, there's no assurance that she'll enjoy sex a lot if she's waits and she won't enjoy it much if she doesn't.

Again, these studies never separate out women who have decided not to marry at all, are enthusiastic about sex, and don't have moral qualms about unmarried sex. Some of them enjoy sex very much. I know my first serious girlfriend enjoyed sex a lot even after having many partners. Or at least she was very effective at pretending to.

How To Avoid Single Women With Kids

Someone came here by searching "how to avoid single women with kids."

The most popular entry here is a warning not to date single mothers. You can see for yourself there are hundreds of comments on it.

Of course, you can avoid single women with kids by avoiding women entirely. That fail-safe solution isn't for everyone, though, especially if your a self-destructive masochist who actually wants to get married.

So how does a guy avoid single women with kids (single mothers), especially since more and more women are mothers the older they get?

Hang out in the pet store by the cat supplies.

But seriously, simply pay attention. Most single mothers won't stop talking about their kids, or will badmouth "the father of my kid(s)". In online dating profiles, their kids will often be in their pictures, even though there really isn't a good reason to show complete strangers pictures of their kids unless they're trying to attract pedophiles.

Any woman who hides the fact she has kids is definitely bad news. If you're just looking for sex, there's a chance a woman who hides or omits that she has children is also just looking for sex, and so you might think that's a good thing. But ask yourself... how did she become a single mother in the first place? By other men who were just getting together with her for sex? Stay away, unless you have had a vasectomy, and even then, you should probably heed the warning against dating single mothers.

How do you smoke out a single mother who is hiding the fact that she's a mother?

Perhaps by moving things to her place as soon as you can. You don't want her coming back to your place, anyway. If she's reluctant to let you see her place, she might also be thinking about her safety and convenience, or it might be a mess, or she might live with her husband(!), or she might have kids.

It would take a lot of work for her to remove signs of being a mother from around her place. She could try to pass off the other bedrooms as roommates' rooms.

It doesn't matter how things are going, or how attractive you find her. Once you realize she has kids, especially if she hid it, and especially if you haven't had a vasectomy, you need to drop her immediately. Leave. Ghost her.

If you have any tactics that work for you, please do share them in the comments.

Is It Really Sacred?

Since I listen to every (new) minute of the Dr. Laura Program, I heard her give this monologue recently. It has been posted on her website as a blog post. I still don't see an ongoing blog tab anywhere on the site, but this was tweeted out (by her staff, since she doesn't touch Twitter). It is titled "Respect Your Marriage Vows by Not Shacking Up First".

As regular readers of this blog know, I think shacking up is a generally bad idea; it's almost as bad as legally marrying.

But Dr. Laura promotes marriage and is against shacking up. Dr. Laura maintains that her program is a secular, non-religious program. But if you pay attention, she invokes religious concepts sometimes.

If someone isn't planning to marry, shacking up can't possibly disrespect their marriage vows. And now, many, perhaps most people, who do want to marry will refuse to do so without first living with the person they are considering as a possible spouse. The secular world has made it clear that they see shacking up as a normal part of relationship cycles. Without invoking religion, it is extremely difficult to explain how this would disrespect their future marriage vows. Dr. Laura has tried to teach that it is objectively detrimental to shack up, which I address here. In this blog posting of hers, she tries to explain why shacking up is bad a different way.

If you call anything a ‘piece of artwork’ or if you call something sacred, don't you immediately look at it differently from everyday objects or experiences? It doesn't matter if you're religious or not, I think when we say something is sacred, everybody lowers their voice and shows more respect. It's not accidental.

So, playing a mind game with oneself? Then someone could call shacking up "sacred" and this is all over.

Another Lament That People Like Erotica

When you watch sexy videos, it makes Mark H. Butler and Misha D. Crawford sad.

Pornography is a cultural icon of the sexual revolution, and many in society have been wisely wary of both. But not so much anymore, as a recent nationally representative survey shows that overall acceptance of pornography has jumped in the last few years to reach over 70 percent.

That's just people willing to tell strangers. Significantly more watch.

The ubiquity of internet porn, with its triple-A engine of accessibility, anonymity, and affordability, both highlights and heightens this acceptance, while simultaneously increasing and intensifying debate about whether pornography represents a real public health risk—to relationships and a stable society.

It's not a public health risk.