We here at the Chateau have in the past written that it is just as easy — in fact, may even be easier — to fall in love and begin a healthy long term relationship with a woman after having sex with her on the first date as it is with a woman who has made you wait for weeks or months before having sex.
Well, now science once again hearts Chateau with a new study proving exactly our contention.
Relationships that start with a spark and not much else aren’t necessarily doomed from the get-go, new University of Iowa research suggests.
In an analysis of relationship surveys, UI sociologist Anthony Paik found that average relationship quality was higher for individuals who waited until things were serious to have sex compared to those who became sexually involved in “hookups,” “friends with benefits,” or casual dating relationships.
But having sex early on wasn’t to blame for the disparity. When Paik factored out people who weren’t interested in getting serious, he found no real difference in relationship quality. That is, couples who became sexually involved as friends or acquaintances and were open to a serious relationship ended up just as happy as those who dated and waited.
Abstinence counselors, prudes and Promise Keepers wept.
“We didn’t see much evidence that relationships were lower quality because they started off as hookups,” said Paik, an assistant professor in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “The study suggests that rewarding relationships are possible for those who delay sex. But it’s also possible for true love to emerge if things start off with a more ‘Sex and the City’ approach, when people spot each other across the room, become sexually involved and then build a relationship.”
Pure, feral lust is a necessary prerequisite to romantic love. A love not undergirded by animal lust is not a romantic love at all. It is, at best, a companionate love, or an affectionate love, or a phony love that two losers convince themselves to feel when no other options are available. So why delay the inevitable? If you feel hot for each other, go ahead and consummate on the first date! You won’t poison any budding relationship that might follow.
So if not the context of sexual involvement, what is behind the lower quality scores for relationships initiated as hookups? Paik points to selection: Certain people are prone to finding relationships unrewarding, and those individuals are more likely to form hookups.
“The question is whether it’s the type of relationship that causes lower quality or whether it’s the people,” he said. “The finding is that it’s something about the people.”
In other words, genes trump culture. Again. Can a blank slatist read a science article these days without having an ulcer attack?
The study has a few choice things to say about sluts, implying that they make poor wife and girlfriend material:
People with higher numbers of past sexual partners were more likely to form hookups, and to report lower relationship quality. Through the acquisition of partners, Paik said, they begin to favor short-term relationships and find the long-term ones less rewarding.
It’s also likely that people who are predisposed to short-term relationships are screened out of serious ones because they don’t invest the time and energy to develop long-term ties, Paik said.
Why bother investing when the sexual horizon beckons with illimitable choice?
“While hookups or friends with benefits can turn into true love, both parties typically enter the relationship for sex and the expectations are fairly low,” Paik said. “In the casual dating category, some people think they’re headed for a long-term relationship, but there are also people who are only in it for sex. It basically brings ‘players’ and ‘non-players’ together. As a consequence, it raises the question of whether casual dating is a useful institution. This paper would suggest not really, because it doesn’t screen out the non-romantic types.”
Re-read the above paragraph for clarity. That pretty much describes modern dating in a nutsack. Casual dating is dead, replaced by one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of Don Juans; a system of neverending seduction designed to maximize the scramble for mating opportunities, to indulgently reward the winners, and to mercilessly punish the losers. We are living in the Reign of Replicators.
And who do you think comes out on the top and bottom in this system, based on relationship quality?
In conducting the study, Paik controlled for several factors known to influence relationship quality, such as marital status, children and social embeddedness. Consistent with prior research, he found that unmarried couples and those with children had lower relationship quality, but couples with positive ties to each other’s relatives had higher relationship quality.
Losers: Single moms, women in an alpha male’s rotation.
Winners: Couples formed from close-knit (read: non-diverse) communities.
There was one final interesting coda to the study:
In a study of Chicago-area adults published earlier this year, Paik reported that being involved with a friend increased the likelihood of non-monogamy by 44 percent for women and 25 percent for men. Involvement with an acquaintance or stranger increased the odds by 30 percent for women and 43 percent for men.
Note that sex disparity. When a woman eventually spreads her legs for a male friend (read: orbiter) she is more likely than the man to cheat. In contrast, when a man has sex with a mere acquaintance or a stranger he is the one more likely to cheat. This tells us something very revealing about the evolutionarily molded mental processes of men and women. Judged by their relative increased propensity to cheat, women are more prone than men to consider a converted LJBF an unsatisfactory sexual partner. And men are more prone than women to cheat on a lover who was a stranger or loose acquaintance at first meeting.
Lesson: If you want a faithful girl as a lover, you’re better off starting fresh with a new woman than trying to convert a long-time female friend to a lover.
And if you are a woman who wants a faithful man as a lover, you’re better off having a relationship with a man from your family or community circle.
Another way to look at this: Women get stronger tingles for strange and mysterious cock than they do for familiar and friendly cock. And men feel more fidelity to familiar and friendly former LJBFs whom they have finally bedded than they do for random hookups.
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