How Not to Be an Incel or a Psychopath

An anonymous guest post

An anonymous reader sent me this email. Personally, I don’t really relate to it, but I expect that many Bet On It readers will have good advice for him.

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Your friend Dr. Michael Huemer recently wrote: “We have no prohibitions on, say, lying to get sex... Not only don’t we have legal sanctions for these things; we don’t even have significant social sanctions, nor do we try to teach young people not to do these things.”

I don’t know if he’s read the statistics about Gen z, but situationships have become the default relationship model on college campuses. (The other default model is having no relationship at all.)

1) A 2024 YouGov survey found that 50% of Americans aged 18–34 have been in a situationship, compared to only 38% of Gen X.

2) The “Nanoship” Evolution: Tinder’s “Year in Swipe” report (late 2024) identified an even more casual trend called “nanoships”—brief, low-stakes romantic connections that don’t even reach the level of a situationship.

And no, this isn’t because the women are cool with it. They generally are very frustrated by this dynamic, and do not enter into it willingly, but the top 10-20% of desirable men (the only ones modern women are willing to date) are comfortable lying long enough to secure this arrangement for a time before moving on to the next victim, if we want to frame it that way.

Do you have any advice for men who feel like life presents us with the following predicament: be an asshole, or be celibate, or long-term commit to someone you’re just not into for anything other than sex?

What I mean is, it’s common to only want sex in your relationships with women, but it’s really, really hard to sleep with women if you’re honest about that. I have literally never met a woman who was interested in sex with me unless I told her I was planning on a long future with her, so I know for me at least, I would’ve had to have been a literal incel since I first became sexually active at age 18 if I chose the path of pure forthcomingness and honesty. So yes I admit I have exaggerated the depths of my feelings for women to get permission to have sex with them.

This makes me feel guilty every time I do it. But on the other hand, the need to have sex feels like a powerful pressure valve inside my head that has to find a release or I’ll just become depressed or tear my hair out in a frustrated sense of deprivation.

The thing is, are the women I date any worse than me? Because in turn, women greatly exaggerate their youthfulness (literally lying by three years on avg about their age on dating apps), attractiveness (by wearing makeup), and about their willingness to have sex often in the early stages of a relationship to get you to make an irreversible lifelong commitment—and then if you marry them they have a very strong tendency to let themselves go, get fat, and turn the bedroom dead.

Arguably the latter is an even more manipulative and consequential lie. (Or if it isn’t a conscious lie, it is at least a very harmful misrepresentation made by women, which they go out of their way to make for the sole purpose of influencing me to get something that they want.) If you disagree with me about the empirical claim, read Performative Bafflement’s bleak article about American obesity trends and dead bedrooms.

So should I just become a miserable, chronically sexually frustrated but honest and forthcoming person? Or should I start long term committing to people I don’t like that much?

“Just date women who want the same thing you want?” Why don’t we ask women to only date men who want the same thing they want—someone who will withhold sex and let themselves go to the tune of 20+ lbs in the long run, as most young women eventually do (again, see the depressing statistics covered in link 1 above)?

And okay, sure, I would happily do that, but where are they? I have tried to do polite society a favor by quarantining myself within venues expressly dedicated to casual sex, using the hookup app Pure. But imagine my shock when it turned out every girl I’ve met on there turned out to gatekeep sex behind professions of long term commitment as well! I also tried just practicing a policy of radical honesty and forthcomingness with anyone I dated for a year—that was last year, and I dated three women, and when they started asking about my willingness to commit, bracing for the incredible social awkwardness soon to follow, I told them very bluntly that I was only interested in sex.

I had to muster real courage to say that, and they were all horrified and deeply personally offended. I’m sure it must be so much easier to just be approximately 80% of other young men, with a normal brain, and routinely lie, psychopathically, with zero introspection or a strong sense of self-justification. It goes without saying this left me almost entirely celibate for a year, which was very painful/uncomfortable, and those girls all went on to find some other guy who wasn’t more committed than me, just more willing to tell women what they want to hear.

My friend has suggested the solution is to just say I’m interested in a LTR, and then make it as much about sex as possible, with the understanding that LTRs by default end up being impermanent anyway. The vintage divorce rate for marriage is like 50% or something, right? And then another third of marriages end up being non divorced but unhappy unions. So basically, love is fake or not something anyone can count on, and therefore promising it to someone is cheap and easy—so promise away! Well I tried that, and the relationship crashed and burned and she hates me now, and I still feel guilty.

“Just find someone you like enough you’d date them for their own sake rather than just for sex.” Uh, easier said than done. It’s extremely rare for me to find a partner I genuinely enjoy that much—most actually-hot girls are awful company. I have to make all of the plans, constantly perform for their amusement, drive every conversation, keep them laughing, spend absurd amounts of money on time consuming activities that aren’t sex, put up with her bad attitude and capricious moods, they have zero intellectual curiosity or insightfulness about anything.

At this point my thinking is the only solution is to just either kill my sex drive with drugs, or become so rich and successful that women will put up with me prioritizing the thing I actually want. And sure, whatever, I’ll strive to do that too. But it does feel a little ridiculous that these are the only options that seem like they would actually work. Or is there a drug that will enable me to “learn to enjoy the wonderful platonic company of women”? Well, let me know where I can get it and I’ll hop on that.

“Just date someone you enjoy being around but compromise on the quality of your sex life.” Frankly, even if I could find that temporarily, I’m afraid of committing because I know I’d grow tired of having sex with the same person for the rest of my life. I need novelty to feel sexually fulfilled. Most married middle aged men I know have admitted to me the sexual spark has largely died, which is sad.

(Before you cast aspersions on me for being honest about something most men have zero introspection about—can I get some credit for the fact that most men do what I’m describing above with zero compunctions or self awareness? Do I get any points for actually feeling guilty about this equilibrium and seeking a better one, instead of just proceeding with a strong sense of my self-righteousness? How many men do you know who went a full year, willingly and depressingly, without sex, just to do the right thing?)

Best,
[Anonymous]