Sexuality WL Table

[7Wannabe5]

Purpose of thread being the collaborative creation of WL Table relevant to the realm of sexuality (as opposed to permaculture/ecology or personal finance/ERE.) I also hope that the creation of a third such table may be towards the purpose of better enabling the application of the model to other realms/topics and thereby also creating greater comprehension across topics. For example, I would suggest that thinking that money/capitalism is "evil" will keep you stuck at the same level in the same way as thinking that sex is "dirty", because "trading" and "fucking" constitute roughly equivalent skill sets. And this is also coherent with how the Patricians who lived on inherited capital believed that engaging in trade was dirty.

Copy/cut/paste of original discussion from thread on completely unrelated topic below. My own perspective is likely far too much that of an Old-GenX heterosexual cis-female, so creating the table must be a collaborative effort.

(Maybe 7wb5 can make a table for sex? Not kidding. I think that the recurring sex/poly-debates could benefit from a table of their own!)
She kinda did already!

Another example:

Level 1= Pre-Sexual
Level 2= Pre-Orgasmic
Level 3= Masturbation
Level 4= Dependent Sex
Optimization= Fucking
Yields and Flows = Strong Sex with Mutuality
Systems/Networks= Self-Aware Sexuality
Level 8 = Transcendent Sex



NOTE: I'm not entirely satisfied with my description of these levels, especially the first 2. One thing I was trying to make obvious was that going up one level also requires referring back one level and integrating. In this hierarchy, the focus shifts from inward/self to outward/partner with each step.

From: ERE as a couple: getting things or services?

I think the fact that I actually just did a spot of research to determine whether standard deviations beyond the norm represented by 28 lifetime partners by age 59 would likely qualify me with the expertise to construct such a table clearly demonstrates that I actually do not possess the expertise necessary to construct such a table. Also, my current state of decrepitude is causing me to lapse into Si, so the likelihood that I would lean too hard on personal anecdote is real.

Reading research on the topic of sexuality is simultaneously fairly useless and amusing, because humans are all flavors of opposite of honest about their behaviors in this realm, and researchers come up with some pretty odd conclusions. For instance, I just skimmed a paper that correlated a high number of sexual partners for females who reside in England with being white and regularly engaging in vigorous physical exercise, and the researcher suggested that the second correlation might be due to the possibility of meeting men at the gym*. The other thing that makes this research fairly useless is that, for instance, generating a statistic for total lifetime partners over a population of humans age 25 to 65 tells you nothing about their rate of promiscuity per unit time which is the statistic most relevant to public health concerns.

I recently started reading Deida's book entitled "Transcendent Sex" (with foreward by general transcendence guru Ken Wilber!), but had to put it down because his intended audience is clearly those stuck at Level 4. There are actually two or three quite different experiences which are referred to as Transcendent Sex, but the one which I was indicating at Level 8 in my skeletal chart above might be more properly referred to as Transcendent Sexual Union. This is the variety of Transcendent Sex which requires a great deal of emotional depth in the relationship between the partners engaged. A first step of approach at Level 6 would be attempting to maintain open eye contact while achieving simultaneous orgasm. At Level 7, you are back in a more indivualistic perspective; more focused on developing your own skills and personae. If read with a hat tip to the humor implied by Trevanian with his extreme stereotyping, the sexual practice of Nicholai Hel in "Shibumi" would approximate high Level 7 for an INTJ. I will not describe here, because we do not want any ESTP kids reading along to try this at home.

*clear sub-text of this research paper thus being that the researcher is not him/herself in the most sexually promiscuous quintile.

I was kind of joking with the Nicholai Hel suggestion, because he overtly describes himself as a Sexual Master, but considering this character kind of highlights the importance of not skipping over the integration of the Open Verbal Communication towards Honoring of Preferences piece at Level 6. Bringing yet another realm into the model (Reading/Erudition), I think of Sexual Level 6 as being roughly akin to the 5% of people who read 95% of the books published, although it definitely isn't the case that a human must be at Level 6 Erudition in order to be at Level 6 Sexuality and vice-versa across the entire catalogue of WL tables, although a certain level of verbal and emotional IQ is likely necessary.

[ertyu]

This made me chuckle. Are we having a 3D surface for all the allo to ace + the entire alphabet soup of gender and sexuality orientations too? Or how are we handling that bit?

[daylen]

Sexuality is an orientation along an asexual Klein bottle that is the universe.

[7Wannabe5]

@ertyu:

Good question. My first note would be that much of the vocabulary that will be necessary to further this discussion was emergent of either the LGBTQIA community and/or the Kink community. In our culture a high-functioning, vanilla, heterosexual couple could potentially arrive at Level 6 together with little insight into the relevant factors that got them there. Just like a physically attractive, reasonably social achiever with IQ of 120 could find themself at the pinnacle of careerist success without questioning the underlying factors/cultural field. It's the humans who vary from the norm who gift those who are more normative with the vocabulary that will also be of value to them as they explore their own sexual personae at Level 6.

My own primary variations from the norm that have lent me some perspective are hyper-sexuality (due to mild cyclothymia inherited from my mother who suffers from bi-polar disease) and a lifelong tendency towards solo polyamory as a preference (which I wasn't allowed to freely practice in the slut-shaming culture of my youth.) Also, my psychological Openness score is around 99th percentile. I believe there is always room to grow in self-awareness of one's own unique identity and kink profile and gain empathy and honor for the perspective and preferences of others.

So, to answer your question, it would be my hope that much of the 3D surface could be verbally abstracted. For simple example, "Fucking" could certainly be read as heteronormative, but I might use it in a sentence such as "There was a vibrant spirit of fucking exhibited in 'On Our Backs' , the first women-run lesbian erotica magazine to achieve large circulation in 1984." According to the internet, the original meaning of "fuck" was "to strike" and the word "fist" is derived from the same root. So, clearly Rosie the Riveter is also exhibiting some fucking vibrant spirit in in the classic poster below.

[7Wannabe5]

Okay, a couple examples:

The kind of garden variety* bad sex that might occur at the intersection of Level 3: Masturbation and Level 4: Dependent Sex would be one partner up in their head thinking about a personal fantasy/something they watched on PornHub and the other partner just willing/consenting to go along with it, because too emotionally dependent on the relationship to risk clearly communicating preferences. This can happen on a first date or in year 27 of a marriage.

For some reason, I seem to associate Level 7 towards Level 8 with Japanese culture, because I already mentioned the novel "Shibumi" and Shibari, the Japanese art of rope bondage also comes to mind. But it's not necessarily about kink, although the sort of kink that approaches art might be found there. Level 8 is definitely about achieving an altered psychological state within sexual context, but it's beyond achieving something like the super endorphin high of "sub-space" through kink practice. Obviously, tantric practice would also belong here, but not the Yoga Bourgeoisie sort of tantric practice (which might be more on cusp of 5/6). Random experiences of Spiritual Transcendent Sex can occur for just about anyone in a wide variety of sexual contexts. For example, one way I've experienced it is like my head is being filled with images flipping through it like they're being run through an old jerky movie projector combined with a sort of narrow slot/branch (as opposed to super expansive) "one with the universe" feeling. Level 8 Spiritual (as opposed to Level 8 Emotional Depth) would constitute being able to achieve that sort of state through practice rather than random occurence.

It's entirely possible that a couple more levels might be needed in the scale. It gets kind of blurry for me both at the top and the bottom. I think the solid majority of couple's therapy type sex advice is aimed between Levels 4 and 6.

*see what I did there connecting it to original Wheaton scale!

[thef0x]

One way ERExWLs are graded is through books associated with each level (https://wiki.earlyretirementextreme.com ... ed_Sources). I'd be curious to know if you thought slotting books into your framework would work, and if so, what books you'd pick. Asking for a friend

I also wonder if a method of "intuitively pick the hierarchy of books" and then rationalize why they're at each level might be a way to fast-track the delineation of said levels.

E.g. Intuitively, I know XYZ book is above ABC book, but why? <-- discovers a delineating factor in the sexuality WL chart.

This might help with the lower levels too? Even just intro books about self-discovery/therapy might fit best at those levels; e.g. therapy books for peeling layers, loving the self enough to access the self enough to experience sexuality w/o hangups, etc. It seems to me that the lower levels are more about coming out of a hole of repression than "how does sex work"? Then again some biology/physiology might also be essential, esp for folks who literally do not know how their sex glands, hormones, etc are working.

I'm following along!

[7Wannabe5]

I deleted my last post due to too much personal memoir. I will save that for my stitch n bitch peer group.

Skeletal Sexuality WL Table with Suggested Books (Very much work in progress. I am debating some of my picks and level descriptions )

Level 1: Pre-Sexual: "Teen Beat" magazine or recent internet equivalent.( Phase of experiencing "crushes" but not fully recognizing them yet as sexual. For example, I once met a woman who grew up in a sexually repressed culture, lived with her parents as a virgin until she married at age 39, and was still at this phase in her mid-50s.)

Level 2: Pre-Orgasmic: "Sex for One: The Joy of Self-Loving" - Dodson (obviously meant to move one from pre-orgasmic to solo-orgasmic)

Level 3: Masturbation: "My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies" - Friday (this book actually deserves a higher ranking, but since it describes the largely repressed sexual fantasies of mid-20th century women, it might serve.)

Level 4: Dependent Sex/Pleasuring or Arousing Partner/Sex Tips: "101 Nights of Grrreat Sex" - Laura Corn (I purchased this book in an attempt to "spice up" things about 13 year into my first marriage, and my exes comment was "This is too much chick stuff. In retrospect, I think his comment would be a good generalized description for Level 4, because a "nice guy" who knows how to "make love" but doesn't know how to fuck would also be at this level. Although, it wasn't that either of us were still at Level 4 at the time, we knew how to fuck; more like I was attempting too much of a more-of-the-same tactics "chick" solution for why we were no longer experiencing much Level 5 energy as a couple, when analyzing power dynamics at Level 6 was the more appropriate move forward.)

Level 5: Optimization-Fucking: "Guide to Getting It On!" -Joannides (this is the level that I think would be most difficult to achieve from reading a book. Schnarch also addresses the huge not-knowing-how-to-fuck/knowing-how-to-fuck gap in my Level 6 recommendation. I fairly recently had a partner who was not yet at this level (the why of this being the same reason I sometimes tutor basic math) and when a hawt sex scene occurred in a movie we were watching together, he said "Real people don't have sex like that." This is obviously same/different than finding yourself in a long-term relationship in which you can't remember the last time the two of you had slamming sex like that. )

Level 6: Yields and Flows-Strong Sex with Mutuality: "Passionate Marriage" - Schnarch (this is a great book, roughly a hallmark of sexual maturity and power dynamics within relationship, also hints at Level 8 with some of the suggested exercises such as eyes-open orgasm)

Level 6.5: Book on the topic/practice of having sex every day as a couple. I can't find/remember the title. (There is a possibility that I am confounding my own experiences with achieving levels here, because my second 'husband" and I had sex at least once virtually every day of our 3.5 year relationship. Although, I actually went through my Kink phase which I am nodding at in Level 7 prior to this marriage. Being in a relationship with an overt BDSM Dom was a bit too much for me, so my next BF and my second "husband" were both what I refer to as Natural Dominants, although really towards a bit of a pre/trans error of judgment on my part, because the first was so old that he actually came of age in a culture of masculine dominance (like "Mad Men" era) in the U.S, and the other literally grew up in a culture of masculine dominance in Tehran. Although, they were both also highly intelligent, fairly self-aware individuals with PhDs and liberal perspectives on many topics, so I will cut me some slack. )

Level 7: Systems/Networks-Self-Aware Sexuality: "Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Role Play, and the Erotic Edge"- Taormino (the main reason I am placing this choice above Schnarch's work is that Schnarch glosses over submission and Dominance and other options such as polyamory in his very Modern gender-neutral monogamous couple's therapy approach.)

Level 7.5: "Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson"- Paglia. "Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms", Chap 19 "Why Have Sex?" -MacKay.

Level 8: Transcendent Sexual Union/Spiritual Sex : (this is where I am currently reading, and I do not have a good recommendation as of yet. I would place Ken Wilber's "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution" at this level, but only because you would likely have to be approaching this level in sexuality to grok the references to it in this book. It's not a book about sexuality. More like the book that would belong at this level on any Wheaton Table.)

[chenda]

I deleted my last post due to too much personal memoir. I will save that for my stitch n bitch peer group.

Well that's a shame

[7Wannabe5]

@chenda:

I am 59 not 84, I really shouldn't be going there yet. It's just that my current low level of health is keeping me stuck in Si (memory) loop. If I had the energy to write without reticence about my fantastic plans for my sexual future, that would be different.

[chenda]

@7w5 - Fair enough, I hope things improve for you 7.

I'm wondering where asexuality or voluntary celibacy would fit on the ladder.

[7Wannabe5]

@chenda:

Well, I suppose it would depend to some extent on whether the asexual or "voluntarily celibate" human was interested in romance or pair-bonding or dyadic domestic companionship, and whether they were open/interested in the possibility of having relationships with other humans who aren't asexual or voluntarily celibate.

It occurred to me that as far as I know there is no term meant to convey the opposite of the spectrum from asexual besides the term allosexual, which simply means that you are in the majority that is sexually attracted to other humans, although there is the term graysexual to describe somebody who only infrequently finds themself sexually attracted to other humans. I think this is unfortunate, because I know a lot of humans with very high sex drives who are also often societally misunderstood as outliers. For example, humans with very high sex drives are often stereotyped as stupid or crude, because intelligent humans would be concerned with "higher" or more "refined" matters. For example, one of the mean things my ex said to me was "Only a thug could keep you satisfied." I sometimes use the term hyper-sexual, but maybe redsexual could be the new opposite of graysexual.

Anyways, you gave me some food for thought with your mention of the term "voluntary celibacy", because I don't consider my current slump of semi-celibacy ( it's possible that I sexted with one of my polys last week) to be either voluntary or involuntary.

[shelob]

I’m following this thread with great interest, though I’m not sure if I have much or anything to contribute beyond being a case study for the early levels (probably level 2).

Where would you place the following on the table (NSFW links):

1. https://www.jacksblowjoblessons.com/

2. Aella’s Good at Sex series
Part one: https://aella.substack.com/p/how-to-be- ... starve-her
part five: https://aella.substack.com/p/good-at-se ... tatus-game

3. The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality /Relationships
by Simone and Malcolm Collins
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08D66XXNT
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08D6CGQHQ

All three links contain paywalls at some point, I’ve paid for #2 and #3. If you want to read either, please DM me and we’ll figure something out (roughly the internet equivalent of visiting a friend’s house and reading one of their books, imo.) Not just directed at 7w5, though I’d be really, really interested in your opinion


That said, here is an excerpt form The Pragmatist’s Guide To Relationships that I would appreciate the forum’s perspective on.

There is abundant research exploring how sexual partner count, quantity of sex, and quality of sex affect cognition. While we explore this at length in The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality, there is one specific finding uniquely relevant to relationships: That in women at least, higher sexual partner count alters the manner in which sex accelerates pair-bonding. Having sex with an individual speeds up pair-bond formation (love) in women. We use the term pair-bond instead of the word love here, as the word “love” carries a lot of societal baggage that distracts from the larger point. Sleeping with multiple partners appears to have a permanent effect on the neurochemistry of the female brain. When a female sleeps with a large number of people, the dose of oxytocin her body releases when she sleeps with a new partner decreases. In other words, the pair-bond a female automatically begins to feel for a partner as a result of sexual intimacy declines with each new partner. This effect can be observed in broader statistics and not just in lower oxytocin levels. The more people a female sleeps with before marriage, the shorter and less happy her marriage is statistically likely to be (these effects exist for men as well, but at a much lower rate). Specifically, one study showed that women who had slept with 16 or more partners before marrying had a staggeringly high 80% divorce rate. Note from the Research: Premarital partner count decreases enjoyment of sex in marriage by 4% per partner for women and 5.3% per partner in men. There are some bad actors in this research space, trying to massage data to fit an agenda. Should their studies be taken at face value, it would appear that this effect begins after just two sexual partners, but studies showing that do not remove individuals who have been in previous marriages from the dataset. Once amended to be more intellectually honest, the data suggests this effect does not actually kick in until after a woman has had eight or nine sexual partners. We would be remiss not to mention that some of the studies show that while women who marry as virgins have longer marriages, those who report having only had only two previous sexual partners have shorter marriages than those who report three to nine former sexual partners (so once a women has slept with one person, sleeping with a few more before marrying actually increases the length of her marriage). Most of these studies control for religiosity: Religious people’s tendency to sleep with fewer partners and be happier in marriages would not explain this trend alone. Not many studies have been conducted on the effect of high partner count on males’ ability to form strong pair-bonds, so it is difficult to draw any super confident conclusions for men. That said, from the data we have seen, any effect on men is less extreme than that experienced by women. This may be because sex does not facilitate pair-bonding in chaste males as strongly as it does in females. In other words, promiscuity brings a female closer to a male state in this respect, which is why we would not see the effect as strongly in men. All that said, while this specific effect is not shared in the male brain, more promiscuous men absolutely experience neurological changes tied to brain function (specifically, more promiscuous men produce more testosterone on average). The studies exploring how sexual partner count affects pair-bonding of which we are aware of were conducted within Western cultures, so this may not be an inborn difference in males and females, but rather a product of some sort of acculturation. Cultural pressures can have a pretty big impact on neurochemistry. This data may come across as both unpleasant and disturbing, but we don’t get to choose what is true based on what we wish were true. Enough studies suggest this effect is real for us to feel compelled to report it in the name of intellectual honesty. Fortunately—and we need to stress this as hard as we possibly can—the data does not support that women lose the capacity to feel love if they indulge in sexual experimentation. The data only suggests that sex loses its ability to facilitate/force pair-bonding faster the more a female engages in it, and this, in aggregate, leads to less love in married relationships and thus less happiness. We come to this conclusion based on the lowered oxytocin generated by more sexually experienced women during sex, which would explain the other correlating factors identified, such as shorter marriages and lower reported happiness in marriage. Despite this, we still think that sleeping with multiple partners is an optimal long-term relationship strategy for women. The increased difficulty in securing a long-term relationship with a man or woman without sleeping with them—in mainstream society at least—is raised to the extent that it is likely not worth the tradeoff of insisting on waiting until marriage for sex. Keep in mind the competition. Given that a third of women who engage in online dating have sex on the first date, a woman is at a huge disadvantage in her efforts to secure a good partner if she insists on being chaste until marriage outside of religious sub-communities. This is not to say that you should sleep with someone on the first date, just that if your competition is offering sex on first dates, not sleeping with someone until marriage becomes a less enticing pitch to many candidates. It is also far too risky a strategy to hope that one’s first serious long-term relationship candidate will be the best one to bond with for life. We could even argue that loosening the strong surges of love resulting from sex will make women more clear-headed in making decisions about who they marry. It is ultimately a cruel trick that the body would attach someone to those with whom they have intercourse rather than those who are genuinely favorable long-term partner candidates. The strong pair-bond resulting from sex with early sexual partners can be toxic should a woman use the “spark” she felt in her earlier relationships as an indicator of a good long-term relationship match and avoid settling down with an otherwise good match, not realizing that she isn’t feeling that spark due to a change in the way her brain processes these interactions and not a product of any decline in partner quality. We have a fascinating theory around this dynamic: That the decrease in oxytocin production resulting from higher sexual partner counts indicates a switch between polymorphic states in humans, with each state optimized for different tribal social structures. Essentially, humans may be biologically optimized for both monogamous and non-monogamous tribes, using environmental cues (like partner count) to determine which sort of tribe theirs happens to be. Based on these cues, the brain shifts the manner in which it processes interactions to optimize for one’s likely tribal structure. It would make a lot of sense that a person in a monogamous tribe would benefit from quickly falling in love with a sexual partner, whereas a person in a non-monogamous tribe would be harmed by this behavioral tendency. We find this potential polymorphic shift to be fascinating, as many people are having sex in a manner that would trigger this system to say: “Aha! I am in a non-monogamous tribe. Better not get overly attached to anyone in particular.” and yet many of those same people intellectually expect to settle down into a long-term, monogamous relationship and be happy with it. This dynamic—plus a wealth of other factors—may be contributing to a rise in open non-monogamy in developed Western countries (especially large cities).

My (F22) current bodycount is n=2 with F=1 length of relationship ~1.5 years and M=1 ~ 3 months, and the second time around I did a number of things that are best explained by hormone-induced idiocy. I’m thinking about deliberately getting above the partner threshold where sex makes women fall in love easily, mostly to avoid the falling in love with someone not very compatible failure mode/local optimum trap. To what extent does this constrain my future dating pool due to men on average valuing chastity in their partners? Are those likely to care about that also likely to be those I would not be very compatible with anyway?

[7Wannabe5]

I feel like I just received an emergency call on the strictly-amateur-sexologist hotline.

I’m thinking about deliberately getting above the partner threshold where sex makes women fall in love easily, mostly to avoid the falling in love with someone not very compatible failure mode/local optimum trap.

No, you absolutely do not need to purposefully increase your "body count" in order to get some degree of control over your tendency to fall in love easily. That piece you quoted from The Pragmatist's Guide might be funny if found in The Journal of Irreproducible Results, but should not be taken seriously without a boulder-sized grain of salt. It's the same flavor of "truthy" as an internet article promoting Vitamin D as the cure-all for everything that could possibly go wrong in the highly complex system which is the human body. That said, I would still place it a couple notches higher on my scale than the Jack's piece you linked. Improving your blow-job skills absolutely will not get you everything you want in a relationship with a man as advertised in that link. No. No. No! I do hope I have made myself emphatically clear.

OTOH, I like Aella and agree with a good deal of what she has to say. You might notice that she also directly contradicts the "Jacks" advice in one of her articles you linked by describing why sexual technique is not even that important in terms of overall sexual attraction, let alone general relationship formation and functioning. However, some of my liking for her is due to the fact that we are very similar types. She is just a bit more introverted and dark than me, and she has the benefit of currently youthful perspective on the scene (and still being in possession of a sexy youthful body ), while I have the benefit of being old enough to have also gained the perspective offered by, for instance, being married for around 20 years, and interacting with men as old as 74.

So, I could and will tell you that there are some very good things about being in a marriage of almost 20 years even though I chose to leave my marriage. The best way I can describe it is if you imagine a wooden hallway in a house gaining a patina as the two of you walk across it year after year taking care of the business of the life you create together. I think this is especially true if you raise a family together. IOW, even though I have accumulated a count of 28 partners at this juncture (from 15 to 59) in my life, and I currently choose to practice polyamory, I can still lapse, or more functionally expressed, "relax" into sentimentality as well as romance. It is possible to experience deep feelings without allowing them to control your life to your overall detriment. You just need to add more layers of "good abstraction" (as opposed to detachment or disassociation) or complexity and control to your thought process and practice. This is where consideration of matters such as which chemicals of attachment are produced by which behaviors and vice versa can be very helpful, but it's not as simple as described in the Pragmatist's article.

Anyways, I would place the "Jacks" article at Level 3.5 with a warning label attached. I would place the Pragmatist's article at the same level as the books by Ian Kerner, which are "She Comes First: The Intelligent Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman" and "Be Honest, You're Not That Into Him Either" because he also takes a semi-pseudo-science evolutionary-biology approach to the topic. So, maybe very early Level 6. In the online dating profile I used when I was in my mid-40s, I wrote, "My waist-to-hip ratio is approximately .72, so according to an article I read in a yellowed copy of Discovery magazine I picked up while waiting for an oil change, it is likely that I would be found reasonably attractive by the majority of heterosexual males." For some reason, my style of humor often involves pretending like I am much further along the Asperger's spectrum that I actually test, and the downside of this style of humor is that those who are further along that spectrum (most men) quite often take me literally and/or seriously. IOW, what I am recommending is that the best value to be found in the Pragmatist sort of advice is by handling it playfully or with curious experimentation, as opposed to taking it as gospel-because-science! In fact, there is generally a lot of fun to be had with the way many/most men are very literal and visual, have box-like brains, and highly-directed tunnel vision like functioning.

To what extent does this constrain my future dating pool due to men on average valuing chastity in their partners? Are those likely to care about that also likely to be those I would not be very compatible with anyway?

Well, first I would recommend that you do your best to gain empathy for why men or a particular man might value chastity in his partner. Doing this will greatly improve your optionality through insight. Another book I would highly recommend, even though extremely dated, is "Advice to a Young Wife from an Old Mistress." One great line from this book is "Marriage is for amateurs." This also reflects the extent to which I agree with the Pragmatist's article. The more innocent you are, the easier it is to enter into marriage "for the love", just as with any other amateur endeavor. That said, it is also the case that in our complex, pluralist society, "marriage" itself is not just one thing. For example, there are certainly couples who both have a good deal of experience who enter into more "professional" Modern marriages, because they want to be a Power Couple. The "Marriage is for amateurs" advice applies mainly to the notion/form of marriage that became popular in the Late Traditional era as women gained status beyond chattel and were freed to make a romantic rather than a dutiful selection. Although, of course, it is also the case that romance can blossom in arranged marriages, and this is especially likely to occur if both partners are young and virginal, as opposed to some 16 year old girl being married off to a gristly experienced older man.

Since my sexual partners for the last couple decades have been almost exclusively gristly experienced older men, the issue of chastity is no longer much in my purview. At my age, generally it only comes into play at the level that I usually still follow the practice of letting the man make the first move sexually. But this is less because I am hoping to create an illusion of chastity as a middle-aged matron and more because I don't want to send the signal that I want to be the partner primarily driving the action in the relationship. Also, some of my mature partners have been self-aware enough to suggest that we delay becoming sexually involved in order to make it more "special." IOW, in order to boost our mutual levels of attachment chemicals prior to experiencing the temporary attraction depletion that frequently occurs after sex.

Anyways, my advice to you would be not necessarily reject a suitor because he values "chastity", but rather to reject a suitor if he is not self-aware about why he values "chastity." For example, if he only communicated, "Because women should be chaste. Period." I would likely "react" by running away very quickly, but if he offered me a reflective paragraph or two on the topic, then I might be able to be more "responsive" to his needs, desires, perspective. For example, maybe he just wants to feel special and believes that a chaste partner would be more likely to experience him as special.

ETA: OTOH, If you want to find the sort of man who is highly unlikely to concern himself with your body count, then I would suggest looking for a man whose primary fault/blind-spot is due to arrogance. That guy is going to be dead certain that no matter how many other partners you have enjoyed, he is going to be the one to rock your world at least one quantum level higher. I am so happy I am no longer interacting with youngsters. One of my mature partners, after our first encounter in which he brought me to orgasm quite readily, very philosophically reflected, "It seems like either you really like me...or maybe that's just how you are." Lovely.

[shelob]

I feel like I just received an emergency call on the strictly-amateur-sexologist hotline.

Thanks for picking up. Is this “providing a case study for failure modes at lower levels” or is this derailing/hijacking the thread? I don’t mind deleting the post/reposting it in my journal.

FWIW, I’m sufficiently self-aware that I know that I have quite a bit of resentment around this subject, both for parental reasons and my own experiences with it. I do feel a bit guilty about my current dating efforts, because it exposes others to the monsters in my shadow, but OTOH having completely exorcised them before dating seems like an unreasonable standard and I’ll never deal with them unless I actually go out there.

Well, first I would recommend that you do your best to gain empathy for why men or a particular man might value chastity in his partner. Doing this will greatly improve your optionality through insight.(...)
Anyways, my advice to you would be not necessarily reject a suitor because he values "chastity", but rather to reject a suitor if he is not self-aware about why he values "chastity." For example, if he only communicated, "Because women should be chaste. Period." I would likely "react" by running away very quickly, but if he offered me a reflective paragraph or two on the topic, then I might be able to be more "responsive" to his needs, desires, perspective. For example, maybe he just wants to feel special and believes that a chaste partner would be more likely to experience him as special.

My perspective on that is likely very influenced by time spent as the only woman in my watch shift during my military service. When you’re desperately trying to stay awake and focused on your radar screen at 3am, you’ll talk about anything and everything, and sexuality is better suited for staying awake than most other subjects. That said, my guesses would be:

- holdover from the time before contraception/STI prevention/paternity tests
- concerns around fidelity (aka a heuristic for “likelihood she’ll cheat on me”)
- concerns around status and social signalling, both “I want to introduce my girlfriend to my grandmother at some point” and “I don’t personally disapprove of what [female comrade known for promiscuity] does, but I wouldn't want to date her (at least not in an environment where people knew her before she started dating me)”.

I’m not sure how well I’m phrasing/how well I understand that last one, but it’s a paraphrase of something I’ve heard several times. Another comrade who I directly asked that question (“Why would you prefer a chaste girlfriend?”) said (direct quote, to the best of my memory) “Think of it this way: When you’re buying a car, you would prefer a new car, but last year’s model is almost as good, and you can pay much less.” I still don’t know what exactly he was trying to say, or how the analogy translates to human mating. (to be fair, it was a graveyard shift conversation, so ???) To be clear, I quite liked and respected the guy who said this, or else I wouldn't have asked.

In the online dating profile I used when I was in my mid-40s, I wrote, "My waist-to-hip ratio is approximately .72, so according to an article I read in a yellowed copy of Discovery magazine I picked up while waiting for an oil change, it is likely that I would be found reasonably attractive by the majority of heterosexual males." For some reason, my style of humor often involves pretending like I am much further along the Asperger's spectrum that I actually test, and the downside of this style of humor is that those who are further along that spectrum (most men) quite often take me literally and/or seriously. IOW, what I am recommending is that the best value to be found in the Pragmatist sort of advice is by handling it playfully or with curious experimentation, as opposed to taking it as gospel-because-science! In fact, there is generally a lot of fun to be had with the way many/most men are very literal and visual, have box-like brains, and highly-directed tunnel vision like functioning.

That’s about my level of literal-mindedness (“Sheldon but with boobs” is a description I used to hear quite a bit IRL, before I learned facial expressions.).

One of my current dating profiles is (goes to copy-paste):
“Statistical analysis of the OkCupid dataset indicates that the following three questions are most predictive of compatibility:
1. Do you like horror movies? (No!!!)
2. Have you ever been alone in a foreign country? (Yes)
3. Do you sometimes want to throw it all away and go live on a sailboat? (Yeah…)”

(Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20150208104 ... rst-dates/ )

That actually works pretty well for filtering for the kind of guy whose opening statement in response to that is “What is the significance level of this analysis?”, as opposed to “Hey, how are you tonight?” and “Your smile is gorgeous” (two most common opening lines on an app where I have a different bio.)

I’ve been trying to understand sexual dichotomy theory, but I have to admit I did not know what you meant by “human in feminine energy” until I started training with Nightline
https://nightline.ac.uk/
A lot of the exercises have to do with practising a warm, soft tone of voice and with non-judgementality and non-directionality in conversation. The first training day was an aha moment – “ah, so that’s what all that was about”.

I think you’ve written elsewhere that really high functioning is being able to inhabit both poles/switch into the most appropriate/useful mode at will. I get that (now), and I’ve been trying to learn fashion etc. after spending a significant portion of my adolescence avoiding everything feminine-connotated (bright coloured clothes, anything like makeup, classes and hobbies with more than 1/3 girls) like the plague. The test you mentioned elsewhere (what is the greater insult or compliment, useless vs. ugly, heroic vs. beautiful) gives “masculine” answers for me.

Before I say anything more, again I’m sorry for the hijack and will delete+repost if not appropriate for the subject of the thread.

[7Wannabe5]

@shelob:

Oh, I definitely didn't mean to imply that you should post elsewhere. More that I was trying to offer disclaimer that I'm not a real sexologist, I am just playing a bit at being one on this forum. Also, you are very young and actually seem quite self-aware for your age. As with the ERE Wheaton scale, it's also not a "failure" to find yourself at any given level. Enjoy the ride. As your more experienced elder, I just want to caution you about some ways in which you could also put on a seatbelt.

holdover from the time before contraception/STI prevention/paternity tests
- concerns around fidelity (aka a heuristic for “likelihood she’ll cheat on me”)
- concerns around status and social signalling, both “I want to introduce my girlfriend to my grandmother at some point” and “I don’t personally disapprove of what [female comrade known for promiscuity] does, but I wouldn't want to date her (at least not in an environment where people knew her before she started dating me)”.

I’m not sure how well I’m phrasing/how well I understand that last one, but it’s a paraphrase of something I’ve heard several times. Another comrade who I directly asked that question (“Why would you prefer a chaste girlfriend?”) said (direct quote, to the best of my memory) “Think of it this way: When you’re buying a car, you would prefer a new car, but last year’s model is almost as good, and you can pay much less.” I still don’t know what exactly he was trying to say, or how the analogy translates to human mating. (to be fair, it was a graveyard shift conversation, so ???) To be clear, I quite liked and respected the guy who said this, or else I wouldn't have asked.

Okay, if you are going to attempt to be empathetic to any/all of these preferences, and also respectful of the fact that other humans are allowed to have their own preferences (IOW, it's not your job to talk them out of them.) and you would maybe like to be the girlfriend of somebody with these preferences, you can either make the choice to actually be as chaste in your sexual behavior as possible, be somewhat deceptive about how chaste you actually are (for better or worse, "what happened in Vegas" amnesia is very common human behavior), or consider some counter-examples and higher level abstractions. For simple example, you could have also asked the guy you liked, "Would you ever date a girl who had already been with 12 other guys?" and if he was sticking with his somewhat unfortunate "buying a car" analogy, he might reply "Well, she would have to be smoking hot. Like I'd rather drive a used Lamborghini than a new Subaru." Okay, now you are getting a better sense of the market trade-off.

One of the potential issues mentioned that I can definitely speak to from my experience is "I want to introduce my girlfriend to my grandmother at some point." Based on my lifelong experience, I think I could tell a man on our second date that I gang-banged the entire university rowing team, and he would still want to introduce me to his grandmother, whereas he wouldn't want to introduce slobby drunk with tattoo-covered bosom exposed by low-cut Hooters t-shirt and inch thick make-up who peppers her speech with expletives to his grandmother even if a medical examination verified intact hymen. It's just the fact that his imagination summons up this stereotypical image when you describe a woman as unchaste. IOW, the more you look and behave like Doris Day and/or an only subtly sexy librarian, the more you can get away with in this regard. Actually, and I know this is hard to believe, men tend to over-rely so much on their visual center in this realm, simply being somebody who naturally smiles a lot will often get you auto-pegged as a "good woman."

That actually works pretty well for filtering for the kind of guy whose opening statement in response to that is “What is the significance level of this analysis?”, as opposed to “Hey, how are you tonight?” and “Your smile is gorgeous” (two most common opening lines on an app where I have a different bio.)

Good going! I once received a seemingly angry message along the lines of "So, you think you're too smart for most guys..." and I couldn't tell whether he was serious or trying to "neg" me.

A lot of the exercises have to do with practising a warm, soft tone of voice and with non-judgementality and non-directionality in conversation. The first training day was an aha moment – “ah, so that’s what all that was about”.

Yup. That's why I was amused when accused of possibly flirting with somebody on this forum. I know better than to bring out my "Yes, but..." debater voice in a dating situation. Although, I do eventually filter (or be filtered )for men who have the ability to deal with it without getting butt-hurt or otherwise overwhelmed.

I think you’ve written elsewhere that really high functioning is being able to inhabit both poles/switch into the most appropriate/useful mode at will. I get that (now), and I’ve been trying to learn fashion etc. after spending a significant portion of my adolescence avoiding everything feminine-connotated (bright coloured clothes, anything like makeup, classes and hobbies with more than 1/3 girls) like the plague. The test you mentioned elsewhere (what is the greater insult or compliment, useless vs. ugly, heroic vs. beautiful) gives “masculine” answers for me.

Well, the test is hardly infallible, and my first note would be that it only "works" if the comment is coming from your lover, particularly in a context in which you might find yourself vulnerable. Also, as with most things, oftentimes personality type, cultural background, or experience might come into play more than core or primary gender identification. And objective reality also counts for something. If you know that you are objectively strikingly beautiful, a lover saying "you ugly" might just be amusing. And it has been my experience that the older you get, the more impervious you become to any such comment. You might ask "Why would you say that?" out of curiosity.

There are quite a few of these dichotomies which are only semi-related and can always be deconstructed or tossed aside once considered. Masculine/Feminine, Dominant/submissive, Lead/Follow, Do/Be, Action/Response, etc. etc. Also, even if a man indicated that he was attracted to women who are feminine, his particular notion of femininity might differ significantly from that of any other given man. For example, "sharp" might seem more masculine, but a kitten has sharp claws. If you own your own flavor of femininity, you will find the guy who goes for it.



Also, here's a basic article I found that covers more of the chemicals involved in romantic/sexual relationships. One other thing I've noticed in my peer group is that the attachment chemicals generally go relatively down with age in women and relatively up with age in men. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that men tend more towards committed monogamy with age. It's more like they are less likely to exhibit the irresponsible "fuck and flee" type reaction/behavior of their promiscuous youth, but more likely to exhibit responsible polygamous rooster-who-cares-for-all-the-hens-in-his-harem-and-family reaction/behavior. I use the term "reaction", because this can happen even absent self-awareness. Vasopressin is one of the primary chemicals that cause both proximity induced bonding/affection and territoriality in human males.

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017 ... anionship/

As noted in the article, oxytocin is associated with prejudice as well as affection. IOW, it creates the of mine/not of mine boundary. Kind of the up and downside of tendency towards wanting to marry the boy/girl next door vs. experience erotic adventure with attractive more-of-an-other. On the full spectrum of species, humans are more towards mating outside of pack. After three generations of inbreeding, the village is not highly functional. This is why violations of incest boundary make us feel like vomiting. So, I would bet that a high number of sexual partners would also be correlated with greater cultural and physical appearance differences in partner choice beyond just the fact that more partners is bound to include more variety in partners.

[jacob]

I'm wondering whether a 1-dimensional table is the best format here. Beyond stage 3, it involves two people each at their own stage. Later stages potentially even more . Getting into the nitty-gritty of matrices and tensors would void the useful parsimony of a table, but how you explain stage N having sex with stage N+2 or N+3? Unlike the traditional WL table, where N+2 is dismissed as crazy and N-2 is dismissed as lazy, I figure that sexuality would result in different interactions. E.g. split the difference, lowest common denominator, ... IOW, I think a difference in stage is more complicated than the lazy/crazy explanation of the traditional Wheaton/Overton window.

[chenda]

One of the benefits of globalisation and eradicated of anti-miscegenation laws is that people are reproducing within a much wider gene pool. This should strengthen the genetic diversity of the species, which has been too small since we almost went extinct ~70000 years ago.

Re oxytocin et al, one theory about high functioning autism/Asperger's is that the hormones function in a slightly different way. Resulting in attachments (falling in love) with special interests rather than people. This may be why the human race is so successful - 99% designed to breed, with a small minority who develop obsessive interests in obscure topics out of which the occasional genius emerges which propels humanity forward. Most very high IQ individuals have strong autistic traits, which is probably why most geniuses are usually men (average intelligence is the same across the genders, but very high outliers are usually men)

[shelob]

Something like this? I'm not sure if just adding the two levels gives useful information. (Also, the colours have no normative significance, that's just the libre office editor.)

[7Wannabe5]

IOW, I think a difference in stage is more complicated than the lazy/crazy explanation of the traditional Wheaton/Overton window.

I actually don't think it is much more complicated. "Passionate Marriage", the book I placed at Level 6, is very much in alignment with the transition to systems thinking. Putting aside issues such as experienced by humans who have suffered sexual trauma or are repressed in exhibiting their core sexual preferences, I would suggest that the rule of thumb is that the level of sexual interaction will fall to the lowest common denominator unless or outside of the extent to which one of the partners evinces Dominance (at least to the extent of very strong "differentiation" and boundaries) or Ginger Rogers level skill in the follow/strong submissive behavior(once again at least to the extent of very strong "differentiation" and boundaries.) Simply modeling behavior at a higher level will not work in the way it might in a relationship with separate finances in the realm of personal finance. IOW, a very overly simplistic summary of "Passionate Marriage" would be that it is a very dense 400 plus page manual on how to psychological separate your sexuality within the context of Modern Marriage.

I would also place the sexual dichotomy theory based books by David Deida, "The Way of the Superior Man" and "Dear Lover" or "It's a Guy Thing" around this level. At the level of pure lizard brain sexuality, the dichotomy is Dominant/submissive, and this is what is often explored to the nth degree by the nerds who are into BDSM. I actually learned (kennen'd) a lot about how my brain and nervous system works during the 9 months I was in an overtly BDSM relationship. The sexual dichotomy of feminine vs masculine energy addressed by Deida is more akin to assigning the frontal "grasping" or active-drive or agency part of the brain to the "masculine" and the entire emotional limbic part of the brain to the "feminine." As a female rational I often find myself in relationships with men whose Fi or Fe is more primary than my tertiary Fe, so this was actually more difficult for me to sort out than Dominance/submission.

I experience men with higher Fi as being more aesthetically sensitive than me and I experience men with higher Fe as being more of a sweetheart than me, BUT they are also still more guy-like. For example, I met up with my poly-partner who is a "sweetheart" type after not seeing him for a long time during the covid lock-down. The notion I had in my head was that our relationship was now more along the lines of "dear friends." So, we walked along a trail and had a very engaged discussion in which he was very supportive of stuff that was going on with me (he was a minister before mid-life crisis), but then as we were about to say our goodbyes, he grabbed me and putting on his hard Dominant face said "I'm a man. I still want to fuck you." So, I think that maybe what the testosterone does is that it makes even men who are more emotional types more likely to have a Box Brain than a rational female. For another example, I can see that in how some of the minority group of emotional type men on this forum are more inclined to vent or express themselves emotionally, but still keep steadily socking away the $$.

A simple example of what I mean by Ginger Rogers skills is what I sometimes do to counter-act the fact that many men have been over-trained to not be sexually assertive theseadays. This is a move which I learned directly from Deida's note that if a man places his hands on a woman's waist, it is not usually her natural response to place her hands on his waist. The natural response, if attracted to the man, is to physically relax a bit into a swoon. So, in Ginger Rogers mode, attempting to give Fred the signal that it's okay to take the lead, I will swoon a bit before he puts his hands on my waist. In general terms, I call this "creating an attractive vacuum" and in sexual context it works much, much better than modeling behavior. In fact, in sexual context modeling behavior is often counter-productive, because you aren't behaving in the persona that you wish to inhabit. The highest level sex that can be achieved with egalitarian modeling behavior would be akin to being a hip-hop dance duo, or mutual masturbation, or two monkeys and no banana. You can't achieve the romance of a waltz or the eroticism of a tango with modeling behavior alone.