Why isn't the author missing the obvious solution here: sex workers.
He clearly 1) wants casual sex with no committment 2) is averse to following social norms so should have no problem breaking the taboo against sex work and 3) sees himself as someone who can " become so rich and successful that women will put up with me prioritizing the thing I actually want".
Just paying to satisfy his base urges gets him what he wants while perfectly aligning with his values. Maybe he doesn't have the financial means yet, but he's clearly willing to work tremendously hard and invest to solve this problem (I imagine libido killing drugs aren't cheap). Focus on maximizing income, move to a city with a high concentration of sex workers and loosely enforced laws and do what he claims he wants.
If this doesn't work, then he's lying to himself and actually does value the emotional connection that most people get with sex (though if you're discerning enough you can get or at least mimic this with pros), so if he's unwilling to do this then it just indicates his preferences are inconsistent.
"It’s extremely rare for me to find a partner I genuinely enjoy that much" - we know. This is normal. It's why people talk about finding "the one": because even if you don't believe there is literally only one person in the world you can be happy with, it is rare to find someone you really click with. Most dates you go on will feel like "this person is quite nice, but I don't really want to spend more time with them". You just have to keep trying until you meet someone whose company you really enjoy.
It's possible that at the moment, you are young and really do just want to get laid. That will probably change. Most people like being in love.
I also think you should examine your attitude towards women. Some of the passages in your email feel quite bitter and hateful, e.g. "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". How do you feel when you see women online writing about "men" or "the average man" in this kind of tone?
It seems like you want to do the right thing and avoid hurting your partners; maybe the first step to that is to honestly ask yourself if you are a bit of a misogynist, and if so, try and lose that attitude.
You don't have to lie! But you also don't have to be a terrible salesman.
When asked what you are dating for simply say "I am open to anything. Whether it be a few dates or eventually a long term relationship."
This way you are open to a long term relationship developing if you end up liking the girl's company, and you aren't lying about wanting to be in a relationship with the girl before you actually want to.
A few other worthwhile points:
1st, you probably don't just want sex forever. You also want sex. But imagine if you met a super awesome girl than genuinely impressed you as a person and you enjoyed hanging out with. That would be better right? Or imagine if you became friends and enjoyed hanging out with the girls you slept with? That's where casual dating really shines. Your dates becoming hanging put doing cool stuff. If you have little experience with dating and are a little anxious it can be easy to feel negative. I feel you. But with a few positive experiences, which I hope come your way soon, your perception of dating might become positive!
2nd, an easier way to get easy sex without becoming mega rich is to get in shape. Anyway, I find most women don't have exceptionally high standards some men think they do.
3rd, Try joining an in person group/club of people that are into your hobbies and start normal conversations with women the way you would when meeting men to see if there's anyone you actually think is cool before asking them to hang out or on a date.
"How do I obtain consensual casual sex, from women who explicitly do not want casual sex, without lying?"
Answer: You can't.
"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?"
Answer: I'll assume the three options you present are intolerable. Ask yourself, are there any women on Earth whom you would be into for something other than sex, and who would be into you? If yes: pursue those women. If no: prostitutes.
I honestly don't understand what he's asking. It doesn't sound like he's asking for relationship advice, just guidance on maximizing casual sex with zero commitment. Generalizing that 'all women inevitably get fat and lie' suggests that he has never been in a healthy, loving relationship. It's hard to take the rest seriously when the starting assumptions are extreme. Work on yourself first anonymous, and then work to find a woman you genuinely enjoy spending time with. If you can't do that then the problem is you.
1) If he or these older guys are getting bored in their sex life, my hunch is that their wife / partner wants kinkier sex and they're just not listening....
2) Consider two lives one decade out. In one life, you've committed to a wife probably 8 yrs ago and get to parent with someone you know and trust. In another, you have churned through three-five relationy things but now are finding someone, marrying, and having children at pace with her clock (only a few years!) It's kind of your future to choose.
3) the 20% of men get 80% of women stat neglected agency in the game. It's kind of true, but a young man can move himself into that 20% with some trivially easy lifestyle changes. Just lift weights, don't get fat, read a book a month, stay employed, don't drink (too much), wear sweaters, and keep a job. Then signal a willingness to commit and whoah, you (a former 6) can seriously date 9s
Anyway, I feel for this young buck. Sex / love are a tough game and we have not inherited a healthy cultural script, maybe worse our script is actively degrading w phones / screens. But just take care of yourself and get kinkier and things will work out.
I have good news. If a woman is genuinely good company, she will become hot without having to do anything else. Your brain will just start thinking she is sexy because of the emotional connection you have made with her. Even if she is grotesque by conventional standards, her personality will override that in your mind. There have been multiple times in my life when I have felt overwhelming sexual desire for initially unattractive women because they were such a delight to be around and interact with.
Additionally, if you can afford drugs to deadening your sex drive you can also afford to buy your girlfriend a GLP-1 agonist. Don't offer to do so unprompted, of course, but most women who gain weight are just as unhappy about it as you are and will be happy to take some if they feel they can afford it.
I strongly suspect that this individual is either leaving out some key info about his own personality/appearance that makes him unappealing to female partners, and/or just setting impossibly high standards that are sure to leave him disappointed. After reading this, it’s quite clear to me that this person is both neurodivergent (like me) and feels a certain sense of entitlement, ie “I deserve a life full of pleasure but free of commitment,” a phase many young men in this country seem to go through.
The reality that this guy probably doesn’t want to hear is that life is hard for most people and full of trade offs. You can either choose to be in a long term relationship with someone you love, accepting the fact that they won’t always be as sexy as they were at age 25 (and neither will you), or you can choose to live a life that is lonelier but maybe contains more peak sexual experiences. A or B. Both have upsides and downsides.
This whole thing basically feels like someone complaining that they want to be a famous musician without having to do the work of learning music. Sorry kid, that just ain’t how life works. As another commenter already pointed out, there's always a brothel somewhere if you're really desperate. That seems to me like a less healthy solution than getting counseling or maybe just introspecting on your own self-entitlement, but whatever keeps you sane, I guess.
The author of this email clearly cares a lot about truth and honesty, but seems to care much less about making people feel bad. I have a few thoughts, about some of the specific claims made in the email as well as the overall approach that the email suggests:
> They generally are very frustrated by this dynamic, and do not enter into it willingly
I don't think this is true. You can say maybe that these women aren't entering into situationships without a full understanding of what will happen, but they are still choosing to have sex with men without any assurances in place that there will be a long-term relationship.
> the top 10-20% of desirable men (the only ones modern women are willing to date)
This is obviously false, and I am sure you know it. If this were true, it would imply that 80-90% of men are single! Obviously, being more desirable means you have more dating options, but I would bet that this is true for both genders.
> [women lie about their] attractiveness (by wearing makeup),
Calling this a lie is kind of ridiculous. Do you shave, or trim your beard? Have you ever had your hair cut? If so, that is basically the same thing as makeup.
> 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.
This point actually seems like the crux of your problems. It is totally understanding that you would be frustrated by people unconscious self-deception, particularly because you seem to be unable to self-deceive. Being unable to self-deceive is a noble trait, but it absolutely can lead to worse outcomes than being able to convince yourself that you want something you don't.
I think that you are probably right that many Tinder situationships have a man who thinks he believes that this relationship will last for a long time, even though his last three relationships lasted two months each and overlapped each other a bit, along with a woman who thinks that she would love to have sex all the time and be a great partner even if she might just be overly optimistic about the future.
> 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?
This is a false dichotomy, and there are many things in between the two. I doubt that it is literally the case that you are totally uninterested in a relationship with anyone, and that there is no one you could imagine dating. So, why not say "I'm not trying to force anything, I just want to see how things turn out", or something else which is optimistic but non-committal? It's not lying, it is literally true, and it seems like it would still allow you to play the game.
> 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!
This is non-shocking. Imagine the world you are describing, from the perspective of these women. They have heard several, maybe even dozens, of men tell them that they want a long-term relationship, that they are falling in love, etc, etc, and yet each and everyone one of those men leaves after just a few weeks or months. These women probably calibrate to that, and assuming something like "men are much less committed in action than they are in words", similarly to how you have decided that women who say they are some age are probably actually 3 years older. Similarly to how you might read a profile saying "29" and in your head convert it to "32", these women probably hear you saying "I am just looking for sex" and in their heads convert it to "I am a psychopath who doesn't care what people think and I am here to use you".
And, to their credit, this entire post does lack empathy. You aren't making it seem like you want to have sex with women who want to have sex with you. The post makes it seem like you intend to use women in a way that hurts them, instead of finding mutually-beneficial relationships. Probably, however you reveal your intentions to these women, they are able to see this and decide they are uninterested in spending time with someone who doesn't want what is best for them.
> I still feel guilty.
Frankly, it seems like your guilt comes from knowing that you are looking to take advantage of people. I suspect that if you strived to make the relationship positive-sum, even if it was short-term or didn't end up working out, you could walk away from the relationship still feeling overall good about it. But you should feel guilty!
> most actually-hot girls are awful company. I have to make all of the plans, constantly perform for their amusement, drive every conversation, ... etc ... etc
It sounds like you are experiencing Simpson's paradox, where the only "actually-hot" women that are willing to spend time with you want more from you than people who are satisfied with just your body. You have to give a certain amount of relationship quality to a partner to keep them around, and you are finding that for partners who have higher market value, the price is higher. This shouldn't be a surprise to you.
> 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?
I think you get some points for noticing it and thinking it is silly, but when you are in a context where words have specific meanings, it can be more harmful to people to try and pretend you are in a different context where words have different meanings. It's fully expected that you lie about your willingness to work in an interview, there are various government forms where you are expected to fill out a specific bubble whether or not the text next to that bubble represents a true fact about the world, and in romantic contexts, saying "I'm just going with the flow and trying to see what the universe tells me" means "I am mostly interested in sex but haven't entirely ruled out alternate possibilities". But saying "I am mostly interested in sex but haven't entirely ruled out alternate possibilities" means "I am 100% interested in sex and uninterested in anything else". And "I am 100% interested in sex and uninterested in anything else" means "I am a serial killer who is going to have sex with you and then dismember you in my basement".
Yes, it's unfortunate that words don't always mean the same thing. But given that, you should strive to do what is best, not what feels more literally correct.
Also, you should try liking women and thinking about what you can offer them, instead of thinking of them as "someone who will withhold sex and let themselves go to the tune of 20+ lbs in the long run".
It's more important to communicate successfully than literally. It's more important that the recipient understands the message you mean to convey, even if that involves saying sequences of words which are not the most blunt and direct way of expressing one subset of your feelings.
Figure out how to hedge and be non-committal (pun intended) in your answers to questions about the future, and embrace the ambiguity.
If one doesn't enjoy the company of women, perhaps reexamining their feelings towards male partners is healthy. This would allow their high sex and anti-female preferences to coexist in a socially comfortable manner.
This young person isn’t prepared to be a man that serves the interests of another and is therefore not worthy of regular sex with a committed partner. This person is selfish, which is ok, if he wishes to remain in this physical and psychological state but he is obviously frustrated and unhappy about that as well.
“Why commit to anything because I might fail,” is a miserable existence.
Why isn't the author missing the obvious solution here: sex workers.
He clearly 1) wants casual sex with no committment 2) is averse to following social norms so should have no problem breaking the taboo against sex work and 3) sees himself as someone who can " become so rich and successful that women will put up with me prioritizing the thing I actually want".
Just paying to satisfy his base urges gets him what he wants while perfectly aligning with his values. Maybe he doesn't have the financial means yet, but he's clearly willing to work tremendously hard and invest to solve this problem (I imagine libido killing drugs aren't cheap). Focus on maximizing income, move to a city with a high concentration of sex workers and loosely enforced laws and do what he claims he wants.
If this doesn't work, then he's lying to himself and actually does value the emotional connection that most people get with sex (though if you're discerning enough you can get or at least mimic this with pros), so if he's unwilling to do this then it just indicates his preferences are inconsistent.
I hope the following thoughts will help.
"It’s extremely rare for me to find a partner I genuinely enjoy that much" - we know. This is normal. It's why people talk about finding "the one": because even if you don't believe there is literally only one person in the world you can be happy with, it is rare to find someone you really click with. Most dates you go on will feel like "this person is quite nice, but I don't really want to spend more time with them". You just have to keep trying until you meet someone whose company you really enjoy.
It's possible that at the moment, you are young and really do just want to get laid. That will probably change. Most people like being in love.
I also think you should examine your attitude towards women. Some of the passages in your email feel quite bitter and hateful, e.g. "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". How do you feel when you see women online writing about "men" or "the average man" in this kind of tone?
It seems like you want to do the right thing and avoid hurting your partners; maybe the first step to that is to honestly ask yourself if you are a bit of a misogynist, and if so, try and lose that attitude.
You don't have to lie! But you also don't have to be a terrible salesman.
When asked what you are dating for simply say "I am open to anything. Whether it be a few dates or eventually a long term relationship."
This way you are open to a long term relationship developing if you end up liking the girl's company, and you aren't lying about wanting to be in a relationship with the girl before you actually want to.
A few other worthwhile points:
1st, you probably don't just want sex forever. You also want sex. But imagine if you met a super awesome girl than genuinely impressed you as a person and you enjoyed hanging out with. That would be better right? Or imagine if you became friends and enjoyed hanging out with the girls you slept with? That's where casual dating really shines. Your dates becoming hanging put doing cool stuff. If you have little experience with dating and are a little anxious it can be easy to feel negative. I feel you. But with a few positive experiences, which I hope come your way soon, your perception of dating might become positive!
2nd, an easier way to get easy sex without becoming mega rich is to get in shape. Anyway, I find most women don't have exceptionally high standards some men think they do.
3rd, Try joining an in person group/club of people that are into your hobbies and start normal conversations with women the way you would when meeting men to see if there's anyone you actually think is cool before asking them to hang out or on a date.
"How do I obtain consensual casual sex, from women who explicitly do not want casual sex, without lying?"
Answer: You can't.
"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?"
Answer: I'll assume the three options you present are intolerable. Ask yourself, are there any women on Earth whom you would be into for something other than sex, and who would be into you? If yes: pursue those women. If no: prostitutes.
I honestly don't understand what he's asking. It doesn't sound like he's asking for relationship advice, just guidance on maximizing casual sex with zero commitment. Generalizing that 'all women inevitably get fat and lie' suggests that he has never been in a healthy, loving relationship. It's hard to take the rest seriously when the starting assumptions are extreme. Work on yourself first anonymous, and then work to find a woman you genuinely enjoy spending time with. If you can't do that then the problem is you.
Yea... stop overthinking this and just be normal. Just say you are interested in LTR regardless, as is the standard polite society norm.
1) If he or these older guys are getting bored in their sex life, my hunch is that their wife / partner wants kinkier sex and they're just not listening....
2) Consider two lives one decade out. In one life, you've committed to a wife probably 8 yrs ago and get to parent with someone you know and trust. In another, you have churned through three-five relationy things but now are finding someone, marrying, and having children at pace with her clock (only a few years!) It's kind of your future to choose.
3) the 20% of men get 80% of women stat neglected agency in the game. It's kind of true, but a young man can move himself into that 20% with some trivially easy lifestyle changes. Just lift weights, don't get fat, read a book a month, stay employed, don't drink (too much), wear sweaters, and keep a job. Then signal a willingness to commit and whoah, you (a former 6) can seriously date 9s
Anyway, I feel for this young buck. Sex / love are a tough game and we have not inherited a healthy cultural script, maybe worse our script is actively degrading w phones / screens. But just take care of yourself and get kinkier and things will work out.
It seems clear the letter writer doesn't have a wife/partner, and is just anticipating that in the future.
Anon's also saying "I don't want a wife / partner bc I know it will be boring, so instead I'm gonna sleep around forever"
My point is basically: bro, you don't start having fun sex until you've been together for a few years
Some men are capable of love
>most actually-hot girls are awful company.
I have good news. If a woman is genuinely good company, she will become hot without having to do anything else. Your brain will just start thinking she is sexy because of the emotional connection you have made with her. Even if she is grotesque by conventional standards, her personality will override that in your mind. There have been multiple times in my life when I have felt overwhelming sexual desire for initially unattractive women because they were such a delight to be around and interact with.
Additionally, if you can afford drugs to deadening your sex drive you can also afford to buy your girlfriend a GLP-1 agonist. Don't offer to do so unprompted, of course, but most women who gain weight are just as unhappy about it as you are and will be happy to take some if they feel they can afford it.
I strongly suspect that this individual is either leaving out some key info about his own personality/appearance that makes him unappealing to female partners, and/or just setting impossibly high standards that are sure to leave him disappointed. After reading this, it’s quite clear to me that this person is both neurodivergent (like me) and feels a certain sense of entitlement, ie “I deserve a life full of pleasure but free of commitment,” a phase many young men in this country seem to go through.
The reality that this guy probably doesn’t want to hear is that life is hard for most people and full of trade offs. You can either choose to be in a long term relationship with someone you love, accepting the fact that they won’t always be as sexy as they were at age 25 (and neither will you), or you can choose to live a life that is lonelier but maybe contains more peak sexual experiences. A or B. Both have upsides and downsides.
This whole thing basically feels like someone complaining that they want to be a famous musician without having to do the work of learning music. Sorry kid, that just ain’t how life works. As another commenter already pointed out, there's always a brothel somewhere if you're really desperate. That seems to me like a less healthy solution than getting counseling or maybe just introspecting on your own self-entitlement, but whatever keeps you sane, I guess.
The author of this email clearly cares a lot about truth and honesty, but seems to care much less about making people feel bad. I have a few thoughts, about some of the specific claims made in the email as well as the overall approach that the email suggests:
> They generally are very frustrated by this dynamic, and do not enter into it willingly
I don't think this is true. You can say maybe that these women aren't entering into situationships without a full understanding of what will happen, but they are still choosing to have sex with men without any assurances in place that there will be a long-term relationship.
> the top 10-20% of desirable men (the only ones modern women are willing to date)
This is obviously false, and I am sure you know it. If this were true, it would imply that 80-90% of men are single! Obviously, being more desirable means you have more dating options, but I would bet that this is true for both genders.
> [women lie about their] attractiveness (by wearing makeup),
Calling this a lie is kind of ridiculous. Do you shave, or trim your beard? Have you ever had your hair cut? If so, that is basically the same thing as makeup.
> 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.
This point actually seems like the crux of your problems. It is totally understanding that you would be frustrated by people unconscious self-deception, particularly because you seem to be unable to self-deceive. Being unable to self-deceive is a noble trait, but it absolutely can lead to worse outcomes than being able to convince yourself that you want something you don't.
I think that you are probably right that many Tinder situationships have a man who thinks he believes that this relationship will last for a long time, even though his last three relationships lasted two months each and overlapped each other a bit, along with a woman who thinks that she would love to have sex all the time and be a great partner even if she might just be overly optimistic about the future.
> 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?
This is a false dichotomy, and there are many things in between the two. I doubt that it is literally the case that you are totally uninterested in a relationship with anyone, and that there is no one you could imagine dating. So, why not say "I'm not trying to force anything, I just want to see how things turn out", or something else which is optimistic but non-committal? It's not lying, it is literally true, and it seems like it would still allow you to play the game.
> 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!
This is non-shocking. Imagine the world you are describing, from the perspective of these women. They have heard several, maybe even dozens, of men tell them that they want a long-term relationship, that they are falling in love, etc, etc, and yet each and everyone one of those men leaves after just a few weeks or months. These women probably calibrate to that, and assuming something like "men are much less committed in action than they are in words", similarly to how you have decided that women who say they are some age are probably actually 3 years older. Similarly to how you might read a profile saying "29" and in your head convert it to "32", these women probably hear you saying "I am just looking for sex" and in their heads convert it to "I am a psychopath who doesn't care what people think and I am here to use you".
And, to their credit, this entire post does lack empathy. You aren't making it seem like you want to have sex with women who want to have sex with you. The post makes it seem like you intend to use women in a way that hurts them, instead of finding mutually-beneficial relationships. Probably, however you reveal your intentions to these women, they are able to see this and decide they are uninterested in spending time with someone who doesn't want what is best for them.
> I still feel guilty.
Frankly, it seems like your guilt comes from knowing that you are looking to take advantage of people. I suspect that if you strived to make the relationship positive-sum, even if it was short-term or didn't end up working out, you could walk away from the relationship still feeling overall good about it. But you should feel guilty!
> most actually-hot girls are awful company. I have to make all of the plans, constantly perform for their amusement, drive every conversation, ... etc ... etc
It sounds like you are experiencing Simpson's paradox, where the only "actually-hot" women that are willing to spend time with you want more from you than people who are satisfied with just your body. You have to give a certain amount of relationship quality to a partner to keep them around, and you are finding that for partners who have higher market value, the price is higher. This shouldn't be a surprise to you.
> 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?
I think you get some points for noticing it and thinking it is silly, but when you are in a context where words have specific meanings, it can be more harmful to people to try and pretend you are in a different context where words have different meanings. It's fully expected that you lie about your willingness to work in an interview, there are various government forms where you are expected to fill out a specific bubble whether or not the text next to that bubble represents a true fact about the world, and in romantic contexts, saying "I'm just going with the flow and trying to see what the universe tells me" means "I am mostly interested in sex but haven't entirely ruled out alternate possibilities". But saying "I am mostly interested in sex but haven't entirely ruled out alternate possibilities" means "I am 100% interested in sex and uninterested in anything else". And "I am 100% interested in sex and uninterested in anything else" means "I am a serial killer who is going to have sex with you and then dismember you in my basement".
Yes, it's unfortunate that words don't always mean the same thing. But given that, you should strive to do what is best, not what feels more literally correct.
Also, you should try liking women and thinking about what you can offer them, instead of thinking of them as "someone who will withhold sex and let themselves go to the tune of 20+ lbs in the long run".
It's more important to communicate successfully than literally. It's more important that the recipient understands the message you mean to convey, even if that involves saying sequences of words which are not the most blunt and direct way of expressing one subset of your feelings.
Figure out how to hedge and be non-committal (pun intended) in your answers to questions about the future, and embrace the ambiguity.
Needs to look at a Venn diagram and then think about it for a month or so...
See also Stefan Molyneux on sexual marketplace realities.
Got to night clubs or similar if your primary interest is casual sex.
If one doesn't enjoy the company of women, perhaps reexamining their feelings towards male partners is healthy. This would allow their high sex and anti-female preferences to coexist in a socially comfortable manner.
My, my. What a fine mess we find ourselves in.
This young person isn’t prepared to be a man that serves the interests of another and is therefore not worthy of regular sex with a committed partner. This person is selfish, which is ok, if he wishes to remain in this physical and psychological state but he is obviously frustrated and unhappy about that as well.
“Why commit to anything because I might fail,” is a miserable existence.