How Promiscuity Erodes Trust
October 14, 2010
KILROY M. writes:
What Ian wrote regarding Karen Owen’s attention to male anatomy might be the sort of thing often mocked by women as “male inadequacy fears.” I have heard women joke about this on numerous occasions at work, as if it were odd that men, being no less human than women, would indeed feel such anxiety. Meanwhile, these same women see female body images portrayed in the media as a gross crime against female psychological well-being. Of course the media images are unrealistic and cause emotional harm to women, but if what women say about men and their inflated egos is true, then similar objectification is likely to have greater psychological impact on boys. This will undoubtedly affect the future quality of marriage and the happiness of women. But for a woman to see this requires perceiving the bigger picture from a perspective not mired in “grrrl power” narcissism.
More to the point of Ian’s concerns: I too share his fears but not so much in relation to the physical “competition” – I have no idea how I measure up (no pun intended) since I don’t make it a habit to compare what’s in my basement to the next guys’ – but what would bother me was my wife’s inability to connect emotionally and psychologically with me after she’s had multiple men literally inside her. I know that sounds crass, but I suspect the physical act has a corresponding emotional and psychological aspect to it which can be quite intense. This aspect is far more important. If she’s had her “thrill” by way of sexual climax with a legion of chaps before me, what am I then at the end of that diverse parade of hedonist “experimentation”? I don’t care what some women say, that true love will smite any thoughts of comparison and that the bad boy from the rock band at college won’t pop into her mind at certain inconvenient moments – I am sure this will and indeed does happen. It’s intrusive and insulting. I also totally reject the suggestion that love will render all prior such experiments nugatory. How you deal with people on such an intimate level leaves a permanent imprint on a person – nothing, nothing changes that. That’s what scares me, but it scares me because it erodes trust and prevents any feeling of connection and melding. And this is what lasts beyond the fertile/nubile years. Sex can be a hot and adhesive glue that binds two people strongly, but this emotional melding is prevented in an environment of no or eroded trust. Yes, trust is both earned and owed by default, but what promiscuous women don’t seem to understand is that their promiscuity ruins that trust.
Laura writes:
Women are indoctrinated to believe that none of this matters to a man, and to some men apparently it doesn’t. But, you are right, all sexual encounters leave a permanent imprint and it is natural for both men and women to sense the shadowy presence of past lovers. Sex is never purely a bodily encounter. I think you go too far when you say these past encounters prevent “any feeling of connection and melding,” but they certainly lessen trust and make it more difficult to build a stable foundation.
— Comments —
Jesse Powell writes:
On the issue of a woman’s sexual promiscuity lessening a man’s ability to trust her and making it more difficult to build a stable marital foundation, the facts certainly back this up. It is not just the number of sexual partners a woman has had; it is also the age at which she lost her virginity. Women who first had sex at a young age on average have had many more lifetime sexual partners. Early loss of virginity and multiple sexual partners are both correlated with many bad outcomes for women; such as single motherhood, unstable marriages, and depression.
Among women aged 15 to 44, if the woman first had “voluntary” sex at the age of 12 or younger she on average has had 20.81 lifetime sexual partners. If her sexual initiation was at 15 or 16 years old her number of lifetime partners is 8.06. If sexual initiation is delayed until 21 or 22 this number drops to 3.11, and if sexual initiation is when the woman is 26 or older the average number of lifetime sexual partners is just 1.80. The ideal number of lifetime sexual partners is one.
Among sexually active women from 30 to 44 years old, if the woman had never had sex outside of marriage, she had an 80.5% chance of being in a stable marriage, a stable marriage being a marriage that had already lasted 5 years or longer. If she had one sexual partner outside of marriage during her lifetime the chance of her being in a stable marriage was only 53.6 percent. If she had had 5 to 15 non-marital sexual partners her chance of being in a stable marriage was a little less than 30%, and if she had had more than 15 non-marital partners in her lifetime her chance of being in a stable marriage was about 20 percent. Looking only at the age at which the woman first had voluntary sex, if the woman had lost her virginity at the age of 12 or younger there was only an 18.5 percent chance that she would be in a stable marriage. If sexual initiation had been at 15 or 16 years old this probability increased to 40.8 percent. If sexual initiation was at the age of 21 or older this probability rose to about two thirds.
The above data comes from a study by The Heritage Foundation based on the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth: The Harmful Effects of Early Sexual Activity and Multiple Sexual Partners Among Women: A Book of Charts.
I found this report through a blog called The Social Pathologist, which offers a lot of statistical information and research studies on various social problems. He has recently been covering the subject of infidelity and problems associated with promiscuity and multiple sexual partners quite thoroughly.