Does Sex Damage Women's Long-Term Potential?

On my article about player guilt, Ben asked:

Could  you address the final issue that you bring- that sleeping with women  damages their ability to have long term relationships?

You made a fairly convincing case that emotionally, assuming you are  going to flirt and go out and attract women, not sleeping with them  isn't doing them any favors.

Maybe we really shouldn't be going out and flirting with most girls  (excluding the ones who need an emotional escape or similar i guess)  from an emotional standpoint?

More importantly though, how do you justify flirting with girls then  sleeping with them, knowing it damages their ability to have long term  relationships? This bothers me more than the emotional aspect.

-ben

The issue he's talking about was where I paraphrased some 'web wisdom' thrown about about women. Some of it says sex is liberating to women. Some says sex is violent, oppressive, and patriarchal. Some say sex is empowering. Some say it ruins women for the long-term. Those aren't my opinions; they are however common tropes you will run into on the Internet.

Ben's question, though, is one worth exploring... particularly as it ties into the concept of player guilt (which that article Ben commented on was about). If you sleep with a woman, are you damaging her future potential as a girlfriend, wife, and mother?

A growing movement online seems to have arrived at the conclusion "yes, sex damages women's futures."

The men who arrive at this conclusion though follow a chain of logic that proceeds thus:

1. Women with higher numbers of sex partners are, on average, worse partners and mothers

2. Therefore, when men have sex with women, they degrade women's abilities to be competent partners and mothers

While we do have plenty of evidence that women are less faithful the more partners they have, and we've all heard anecdotes of irresponsible man-crazy single mothers ditching their kids to chase the homme du jour, there's a big causal jump between those two points. This casual leap of faith is where guys trip themselves up.

That is to say, women with high partner counts are (on average) worse as mothers and partners. This is true.

Yet their partner counts are a symptom of what makes them worse in these roles -- partner count is not the cause.

And when you take a woman to bed, you are also not 'the cause'.

Men Who Think Women Lack Agency

Before we dive into roots and symptoms, there's another thing to discuss.

That is this belief that "If X woman behaves this way, it is because Y men caused it." This is a belief intrinsic to two seemingly opposite sides of the sexual-political spectrum: progressives and feminists on the one hand, and red pill manosphere types on the other.

I've talked about this issue in-depth before, in this article: "Do Women Lack Agency?" The point we examined was that women continually trick both camps, because women beguile. Women work constantly to shift blame for their choices and behavior off themselves and onto others. Onto men, onto society, onto their parents, their upbringings, their jobs, you name it. This is a survival mechanism and every woman does it.

Because women do this so much, a large swath of people just accepts it as true. "Women keep saying they don't have agency. So I guess they don't have agency." Women get a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card as a result. How can anyone hold a woman accountable for her actions? She's not accountable. Like she told you, it's totally not her fault! She's a piece of driftwood, floating along through life, buffeted about by the currents of fate.

Except that's somewhat a lie. Different women choose to lead radically different lives. Even among similar situations, women choose to do radically different things and behave in radically different ways. Women are not agency-devoid entities buffeted about by life; they, like you, make conscious, self-interested choices.

This is vital to understand for what we'll discuss today.

Because when a woman has sex with you, it is not because you tricked or manipulated her. Even men who lie to women, and really do try to trick them, I've never heard of a case where the woman was fully tricked. I've had women tell me stories about men who led them on and dangled a relationship to get sex. When the woman is honest she concludes with something like "I didn't feel like I could fully trust him." But she went along with it, because she was pursuing her self-interest, and she hoped she could use sex to secure a relationship with this guy. Unfortunately, he misled her (and this is something you should not do... nor do you need to do it to get sex!). Yet, some part of her suspected. Every time you see someone who's been legitimately tricked or conned, it's sad, and you should have sympathy. But people learn from these incidents and stop getting tricked... unless they want to be tricked. And some people do.

Most men are not out there lying deeply to women and trying to really trick them. Not enough that we could say a majority or even a substantial minority of first-time sex comes from 'very tricky men'. This is just not what happens. Women are far more attuned to social cues than men are, and the vast majority of the time if a man tries to lie a little bit, he comes across incongruous and women test him hard or lose interest.

Women have sex because they choose to have sex.

They are not manipulated into it by men.

They are not tricked into it by the media.

Horny men and pro-sex media make women feel allowed to have sex. This is true. The first few times a woman has sex she may do it because of peer pressure, or because it seemed like an interesting thing to explore. But after one or two hookups she engaged in for these reasons, she does not keep sleeping with new men because "everybody's doing it." Nor does she keep doing it because men keep tricking her into sex ("Whoops! Another man fooled me into sex again!").

If she keeps doing it (and some will while others won't), she's doing it because she wants to.

The Root Cause of Amorous Females

Why does one woman choose to have sex with many men while another woman does not?

There are several known factors that influence a woman's desire for many partners:

• Sensation seeking. Women who are sensation seekers pursue sex more and have higher numbers of lifetime partners. Sensation seeking appears to have a large genetic element, as it correlates negatively with conservatism, and we know political alignment has a large genetic component. There is even direct genetic evidence that sensation seeking is tied to dopamine genes. While environments can 'unlock' more sensation seeking in women, and life experiences can make a woman more open or closed to it, much of it is hardcoded into her.

• Sociosexuality. Another major factor in women's sexual behavior is something scientists call 'sociosexuality'. Women who are sociosexually unrestricted tend to have sex sooner in their relationships, have sex with more than one partner at a time, and have less loving, committed, invested, dependent relationships. Sociosexual orientation is also directly correlated to lifetime number of sex partners. And like sensation seeking, sociosexuality has a significant genetic component.

• Abuse. Women who've suffered sexual abuse as children tend to become sexually risky and voracious as adults. (interestingly, gay male 'bottoms' also tend to have strong histories of having been sexually abused as children. Sexual abuse is extremely bad for kids.) Anecdotally I will add I've noticed a strong correlation between women who report being raped and these women's sexual risk profiles and lifetime partner counts. Whether riskier behavior makes a woman more likely to end up in a rape situation or rape causes women to seek out more sex and partners as a recovery option is unclear, though it appears both may be the case.

• Environment. A woman's environment is our fourth piece of the puzzle in determining her sexual behavior. Opportunity impacts outcome. The more opportunity someone has to engage in something, with fewer consequences, the more likely she is to engage in it. There are those rare women who live in the middle of nowhere yet still manage to sleep with every man in reach. These women are creating opportunity themselves, and often disregarding consequences, because they're so driven to (typically they are high in sensation seeking and low in sociosexual restriction). For the average woman, however, her partner count will conform to the norm for her area. Big cities, because they have so many anonymous mating opportunities, lead women to have much larger partner counts than they have in more rural parts of the country. The more men to choose from, and the more anonymous her sex with those men, the more a woman will feel allowed have sex.

Now add all that up.

Any time you have a woman with a larger number of sex partners, you almost invariably have two or more of the following factors at play:

1. She is high in sensation seeking

2. She has an unrestricted sociosexual orientation

3. She suffered sexual abuse as a child or has been raped

4. She lives in an environment replete with anonymous men

How much do you think an individual man is going to affect such a woman's lifetime sexual behavior and ability to pair-bond, compared with all that?

Do you think he'll have a large impact? Or an infinitesimal one?

I know, men have ego. You want to think that when you sleep with this girl, you are going to have a huge ripple effect on her forever. The fact that your cock went in her is going to ruin her for all those poor schmucks who come after you. How will any of those men hope to measure up, or capture her heart after a night with you?

I used to think this way. Until I followed along with enough of my exes and former conquests and realized they are not really changed at all, for the most part, for having slept with me.

I tend to have a strong emotional impact on the women in my life. So that surprised me. Women who date me tend to linger on for a while and continue to try to get me back after we break up. Yet, there they are, moving on, continuing with their lives, having good, normal, healthy relationships with the men who come after me.

You do not cause a woman to become 'ruined' for other men by having sex with her or dating her. If she's no good for men in a relationship, it's not because of you.

It's because of her: her personality, her behavior, and the choices she makes.

Actual Impacts Men Can Have

A man can indeed impact a woman's future performance in romantic relationships with other men. This is possible.

Yet the impact a man has is not the one most manosphere guys seem to think. You have pretty much no impact on a woman if you sleep with her once. It doesn't matter how spectacular that night was, or how terrible it was, for her. If you made her feel like a shining star, or the absolute scum of the Earth, it's not going to affect her long-term if it was just one night. No man has that much impact on a woman in so little time.

It is possible to impact a woman, for good or for ill, in more prolonged courtships and relationships. The only one-night stand I regret, I met a romantically inexperienced girl through work in a remote location. I flirted with this girl off and on for a few months. She was the only eligible female there, and I the only eligible male. After I quit, I moved back to the city, and invited her to visit me. She did; we went to bed. At the time I'd thought she might make a nice girlfriend, but once we were having sex I realized it was not going to work. I tried my best to set expectations that I might not see her again (I was undecided at the time), and I know she heard what I said. She even said "I'm starting to feel like I should not let myself fall for you!" But she was so inexperienced and had fallen for me so much over the past few months it was too late.

She returned to work/home, two hours outside the city. And for weeks she texted me all kinds of lovey-dovey things about the trips we'd take, wishing me goodnight and good morning, and so on. I wrestled with how to break it to her: call her up on the phone? Too cold. Have her come out again, then break it to her? Then she has a miserable 2-hour ride home crying her eyes out on the public bus. Go visit her? I really didn't want to make a 4-hour round trip to let down a girl with, frankly, wildly naïve ideas about what to expect after a single night. So I just responded nicely but non-commitally to her texts, but never made any effort to see her again, and after a month she gave up and stopped texting.

I still feel bad about that. I know she lost some innocence from that. And I'm sure it affected her with future men (how much or how little, I'll never know).

But that was not some random one-night stand. That was a girl I'd known for months, who became infatuated with me over time because she was in scarcity and I was the only eligible guy she had access to.

I don't care how smooth you are, how well you deep dive her, how incredibly romantic you are... no girl is in-love with you when you shag her the night you meet her, or even on the third date (unless she's crushed on you for months).

And without deep, meaningful emotions formed and cemented over time, your impact on another person is minimal.

Ask yourself: how much has any person you've known briefly affected your life? Has someone you've known under three weeks ever dramatically altered the trajectory of your life?

Unless you are doing prolonged courtships where you court women for months, then you do something nasty to them after sex, you are not 'ruining' them for future men.

Now... you can indeed affect a woman's future relationships when you have an ongoing relationship with her yourself. The deeper her emotions for you in the relationship, and the longer the relationship goes on, the larger an impact you will have on her future relationships.

If in the end you're unfaithful to her, then tell her you never liked her personality, and kick her out unceremoniously, despite her having done everything she could to be a great girlfriend, that is going to affect her. I had a girlfriend who had an engagement that'd ended similar to this before me, and she admitted that until that relationship she had cooked and cleaned and did all sorts of nice things for boyfriends. After that though she no longer threw herself into her relationships as much. I still had her cook for me, but she never cleaned my place for me, and she confessed she did not cook as much for me as she had for prior boyfriends. That fiancé who lied, cheated on, insulted, and dumped her had made her a less-wonderful partner for me. That said... she was still an incredible girlfriend. So while he had some impact on her, he certainly did not ruin her. (incidentally, this guy came crawling back looking to marry her years later, too... presumably after some other relationship he had did not work out. She didn't take the bait, and married someone else)

I've had a few relationships end in tumultuous ways where my former girlfriends went off hurt it was over and apparently were a little terrible for the nice guys they rebounded with. I felt bad for those nice guys, but the men these former girlfriends ended up with in the end, as I understand it, they treat like saints.

Which leaves us sort of an interesting question: did I 'ruin' these women for men? Or not?

If you were one of the nice guys they rebounded with, you might've said yes. They were demanding, emotional, venting to the guy about this terrible ex-boyfriend of theirs (me). Then they went and started messing around with me again (for those before my "no getting back with exes" rule), further making them seem like terrible partners to these guys.

But these guys were rebound guys they never would've dated in the first place if they weren't on the rebound. The men they ultimately settled with, I don't have intimate details on their relationships, but from what I can see at a distance they treat those men as well as me. The men seem to be high caliber guys, and they seem happy enough with these gals.

While with girlfriends, I try to make them into better people, too. I had a girlfriend who was an extremely judgmental person. I'm not judgmental, though I also don't mind judgmentalism too much (unless it's directed at me). But when I'm around it I try to balance it out. I'm a big believer in being discriminating, but not judgmental. You may follow the 'no fat chix' dictum (I do), but that doesn't mean you need antipathy to fat people. You can learn to acknowledge a fat person's humanity while, still, being discriminating about whom you allow into your life and in what capacity. My judgmental former girlfriend told me about a year after we'd split up that I really had changed her and made her a less judgmental person, more at-peace with herself and the world. That was a wonderful thing for me to hear... and it did not make her any less discriminating.

The husband she eventually married was to me an impressive guy. Great careers, cool hobbies, 10 patents to his name, in great shape... I think my ex did very well for herself. That was such a big relief to me to see her end up with a great guy... because, like many guys, I worried "Did I ruin her? Did I hurt her with our relationship? Have I totally destroyed her self-esteem?"

In the end, as great and emotional and long (it was a few years) as our relationship was, and while I'm sure I affected her and had my impacts, she continued on as her same normal self and continued to date roughly in her same caliber after me as before me. Although her guy after me was far and away her best on-paper partner she'd had. I like to think I ultimately helped boost her confidence and mate quality up to the point she could net a higher caliber of man. But perhaps that was really just all her and my actual impact was, well... negligible.

Women Confident Because of Sex

There's another phenomenon here we should talk about.

It's women being confident due to being more sexually experienced. This is a real phenomenon. A woman who's been with, say, 12 guys, and had a couple of loving boyfriends, is much more confident than a romantically inexperienced woman. This makes her harder to control for less experienced, unconfident men.

In this way, having sex with women and dating women can 'ruin' them for other men... if those other men are less experienced.

But then the question becomes: who are you obligated to construct your life to serve? Are you obligated to change your behavior to not inconvenience inexperienced men who don't want to trouble themselves to gain experience with women? Or should these guys just go get more experience with women if it's bothering them so much?

I'm of the opinion that, in general, anything where there is competition, if you don't like that there's competition, you need to either go somewhere with less competition, or you need to make yourself more competitive. Complaining that other competitors are making it too hard for you and that you need some affirmative action pussy is just... I don't have a lot of sympathy for it.

Here's the truth: if a guy is less experienced, he either needs to date more experienced women just for the experience, or he needs to date other inexperienced women he can handle. Him lamenting how other men dating and sleeping with women has made it "so hard for him" by "ruining those women" is just dumb.

Just like whining that the industry you want to start your business in is "too hard" because the other businesses there are competing too hard and have made it "too hard" to get into that industry is dumb. Or complaining that school is "too hard" because you want to go to a school a lot of other people want to go to that is very competitive and you think other prospective students should not be trying so hard to get good grades in order to give you more of a chance.

Life's hard. People compete for desirable things. The more desirable a thing is, or the shorter supply it's in, the more people will compete for it.

If you can't hack it, go somewhere easier, lower your standards, or... bloody upgrade yourself.

I hear a lot of guys saying things like "Men shouldn't have to do all this extra work just to be able to date women they want."

Yeah, okay, I agree, everything should be easier. The woman you want should just want to date you and other men should all stay away from her. The money you want should flow into your bank account and everyone should just let you have it. The car you want should just show up in your driveway and the car manufacturer should just give it to you as a gift. Pretty cool to imagine a life like this. But life's not like this. Life is filled with competition, and you're not going to get what you want by asking competitors to stop competing so hard and to please just go easy on you.

So yes, I guess there is a ruining effect, if we're talking about inexperienced men trying/failing to date more experienced women. Those women are 'ruined' for those men... at least until those men gather up more experience.

Do you have an obligation to not sleep with women so as to help these guys? I'm sympathetic to such men... I was such a man myself, until my early 20s. I never felt like any guy not sleeping with loads of girls was doing me a favor though. There were so many men who were sleeping with girls, it didn't really matter if a handful of guys took themselves out of the mating game. Eventually I realized I was either going to need to learn how to be a competitor, or quit whining about it and accept whatever scraps I could get. So I put a few years into focusing on dating and picking up as a skill set, and I reached a point where other men dating and sleeping with women really did not have an impact on me at all.

The reality of today's world is that you have to do this if you want access to the more desirable women, and if you want to have a modicum (or more) of control over your relationships.

Sex Doesn't Break Women

They have it if they want it.

You can abstain if you so choose.

They are still going to have it anyway.

Women who cheat don't cheat because they had a lot of partners. A lot of partners is a sign a woman possesses the traits and inclinations that will make her far more likely to cheat. The partners themselves are not the cause. They are a sign of an underlying predilection.

Yes, there is a certain amount of habit formation that comes with lots of sex. If she's gotten used to running into the arms of other men to feel good about herself, she'll more easily do that when her relationships get rocky.

Yet, abstaining from sex because you don't want to 'ruin' women is a bit like abstaining from popcorn at the movies because you don't want to make the floor sticky. It doesn't make a difference if you don't buy popcorn; everyone else still will. And the fact that you care about not getting popcorn all over the floor means you'll eat responsibly anyway and not leave a big sticky mess behind. You're not even causing the sticky floor issue, even when you eat popcorn.

Sex with women is like this. If you care enough to not want to hurt women, you are not going to hurt women. If anything you can benefit women when you sleep with them. You're probably going to try to make women feel good, to boost their self-esteem, to leave them in a pleasant way.

But whether you hurt them or benefit them, your impact is marginal.

The less time you know a woman for, and the less intense her emotions are for you (and any woman who's known you less than a few months at least just cannot have very intense emotions for you... no matter how effusive she may act), the less of an impact you can have. Even if you want to impact her.

So, be responsible.

Treat women well.

Try not to do things that will hurt them.

But don't think that by sleeping with them you are damaging their ability to be girlfriends, mothers, or wives.

The things that make a woman worse in one of those roles are her actual personality traits, life history, and opportunities to stray.

A guy who briefly blips into her life, goes out a few times with her, then lays with her once or twice doesn't impact any of those things.

You aren't that special. You don't have some magic effect on women by inserting your penis into them. You are just another background character in her life.

Be responsible. But don't make yourself too self-important, either.

Chase Amante