Women Become More Promiscuous In Relationships, Men Become Less Promiscuous

A curious finding is buried in this tour de force article recapitulating the wealth of scientific evidence for the huge sex difference in willingness to have sex with a stranger.

Over the last few decades almost all research studies have found that men are much more eager for casual sex than women are (Oliver & Hyde, 1993; Petersen & Hyde, 2010). This is especially true when it comes to desires for short-term mating with many different sexual partners (Schmitt et al., 2003), and is even more true for wanting to have sex with complete and total strangers (Tappé et al., 2013).

In a classic social psychological experiment from the 1980s, Clark and Hatfield (1989) put the idea of there being sex differences in consenting to sex with strangers to a real life test. They had experimental confederates approach college students across various campuses and ask “I’ve been noticing you around campus, I find you to be very attractive, would you go to bed with me tonight?” Around 75 percent of men agreed to have sex with a complete stranger, whereas no women (0 percent) agreed to sex with a complete stranger. In terms of effect size, this is one of the largest sex differences ever discovered in psychological science (Hyde, 2005).

Twenty years later, Hald and Høgh-Olesen (2010) largely replicated these findings in Denmark, with 59 percent of single men and 0 percent of single women agreeing to a stranger’s proposition, “Would you go to bed with me?” Interestingly, they also asked participants who were already in relationships, finding 18 percent of men and 4 percent of women currently in a relationship responded positively to the request.

Did you catch the glint of that sparkly truthgem? On the question of having sex with a stranger, the percentage of men willing to do so dropped from 75% if they were single to 18% if they were already in relationships…..while the percentage of women willing to fuck a stranger rose from o% if they were single to 4% if they were in relationships.

Welly well, isn’t that interesting. Alpha fux, beta bux in existential play?

Of course, 4% isn’t a big number. However, it is a big number when it leaps past 0%. It’s an even bigger number in a man’s calculations when her dirty deed, or thought thereof, is executed within the comfy cozy confines of a relationship under the presumption of her monogamous faithfulness. How strange that a woman would be slightly more open to stranger sex if she’s already in a relationship with a familiar betaboy than if she’s swingin’ single!

How strange….to anyone who hasn’t had a stay at the Chateau.

As we Illubricati know, the alpha sheen can and often does wear off a taken man. What was once a dominant and sexy new lover to a woman de-sexualizes into a submissive long-term beta bootlicker. Sad! And when that happens, his lady will start to entertain salacious notions of concupiscent cuckoldry. She’ll look at her primary investor, consciously thank him for his dependable omnipresence while subconsciously resenting his lost aura of mystery, and allow herself sensual dreamy drifts into fantasies of fucking the next stranger from afar who cock struts into her rearview, perhaps comforted in the knowledge that any illicit issuance of her tryst would remain undisclosed to her duped day lover.

So if you don’t want to be a victim of the 4%, learn Game. It’ll do your LTR or marriage good.

Maybe just as intriguingly, men become less — a lot less — promiscuous (i.e., willing to have sex with a stranger) when they are in relationships. The vast majority of single men would funbang an average-to-hot girl they had just met, but that percentage drops to a mere 18% of taken men.

So men become more moral once they commit to a woman, and women become less moral once they commit to a man.

Why? One reason: men in relationships fear losing their lovers. A complacency, anhedonic complementarity, and kneejerk gratitude settles in (aka betatization) and robs a man of feelings of masculine sexual worth, until he stops believing he can get a girl as good to him as his current girl is to him. So his big fear is a breakup followed by what he imagines will be years of incel. This fear instigates a cravenness in his behavior and attitude that only further dispirits his woman, who wonders where the heat went.

Another reason: Men in relationships are getting a steady supply of sex they never had when they were single, given that definitionally most men are betas whose single lives are dreary sexless landscapes punctuated by occasional flowerings of welcoming furrow, which are finally notarized into semi-regularity with the signing of the nuptial prison terms. So men in relationships are simply unwilling to risk losing access to that comparatively turgid sex stream, hence the drop from 75% to 18% in willingness to indulge their natural male desire.

A third possibility: Men really are more moral than are women, and this would explain why a huge number of them would deny their God-given male inclinations in order to fulfill the moral obligations tacitly understood to be essential to a monogamous relationship. Women otoh appear to lose whatever moral compass they brought with them to a relationship. Oopsie, sexy stranger’s fault!

Now, men are still men and not women, so the big sex differences in desire for casual NSA sex remain whether in or out of relationships. On the subject of openness to stranger sex, 18% of taken men is still far more than 4% of taken women, but the relevant variable is the intra-sex difference in willingness to eat, pray, stray. Men are horndogs, but women can rest a little knowing that once they’ve cornered a man and removed him from the market he’s basically a neutered pup compared to what he was before she snagged him. Men though have to worry a little bit more once they’ve locked a woman down, because…and this is a maxim somewhere in the CH archives I’m sure…the pussy lockdown is illusory. It doesn’t exist, except by the will of the woman and the Game of the man.

If women are slightly more willing to step out with a stranger when they are in a relationship, within which all the risk of discovery and moral approbation are arrayed against her, as opposed to sexing a stranger when they are single and morally unchained and free of the risk of blowing up an LTR or marriage…..then that should strike at least a shiver of fear in any man who thinks the dotted line secures his honor and his progeny.

Finally, a result that confirms a core CH tenet:

In a French replication attempt, Guéguen (2011) had experimental confederates of various levels of physical attractiveness actually approach real-life strangers and ask if they would have sex. He found 83 percent of men agreed to have sex with a highly attractive woman, whereas only 3 percent of women agreed to have sex with a highly attractive man. Among confederates of average attractiveness, 60 percent of men agreed to sex with a woman of average attractiveness, but no woman (0 percent) agreed to sex with a man of average attractiveness.

The takeaway here is that very good-looking men don’t have a huge sexual market advantage over average-looking men, but they do have some advantage, mostly in short term mating scenarios. No one of sane mind would argue otherwise, however it does prove (again) that male looks aren’t as crucial to men’s romantic success as female looks are to women’s romantic success. If you happen to be in the top 5% of male looks, congrats, you bumped your chance of casual sex with a random woman you just met from 0% to 3%. Unfortunately for the no-Game-having Drabios, women are holistic mate assessors and require a lot more convincing than that provided by a megawatt smile and biceps. The calculus is the same for men of average looks or good looks: to bed more women, and higher quality women, you’ll need a personality. A charismatic man of average looks will run labia rings around dull pretty boys.