Men and Women have Different Prime Sexual Years: Is there a solution?

By temperment, which is the real law of God, many men are goats and can’t help committing adultery when they get a chance; whereas there are numbers of men who, by temperment, can keep their purity and let an opportunity go by if the woman lacks in attractiveness.

-Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth, dropping red pill wisdom in the early 20th century

TMNT-Sexy-Girl-Costumes

The modern sexual marketplace is driven overwhelmingly by females’ sexual needs, not males’. A place where this fact is evident is the college campus.  Girls who are decent, but not exceptionally attractive enjoy hooking up with high status alpha males, like star athletes, frat bros, and those perceived to be in positions of power (frat president?) and money (rich parents).  These girls enjoy their ability to hook up with high status guys simply because they are young and nubile and therefore desirable.   There is very little work involved in order for a woman to slut it up in college, unless you consider it ‘work’ to go to a bar and bat the eyelashes.  As for guys who are not so high status, and lack game? They take what is left.  They accept fat acceptance and rationalize that they are with a girl because her personality is better than all of those other, hotter girls.  These guys put hotties on pedestals and beta orbit them, hoping to use the friendzone orbit to get close enough to hook up with them.  We all know they get promptly and awkwardly rejected at some point.  These poor saps simply have no idea how they can create attraction in the eyes of women.  They lack a strong, masculine frame and a lucrative job, they are out of shape, and they don’t have the edgy attitude that girls want.  The average man doesn’t develop these sexy qualities until a bit later in life. This creates a disparity.  Once they can finally attract women who are hot, they are in a long term relationship and unable to hook up with hotter women without cheating.

I hope Rollo won’t mind if I employ his graph of the modern sexual market place to illustrate the situation:

Screen Shot 2013-05-11 at 10.32.15 PM

Given that this graph is accurate, it is easy for men to get slightly bitter from a pure self-interest standpoint that they were never able to maximize their SMV in the hookup world, whereas women were.   Average age for women getting married is about 27, and for men it’s 29, so we are both getting married at about the same age give or take.  Women are free to slut it up in their prime years (18-23), as many do, whereas males who get married pass up their prime years of value (30s) by getting married.  This is why a lot of guys end up cheating on their wives right around this age.  It’s the middle age crisis.  It’s an existential realization that, hey, I’m aging like a fine wine and a lot of women that I didn’t have sexual access to in years past are finding me attractive.  Should I indulge? I mean, I only live once, right?

To sum up, average women are able to have fun in their peak years (ride the carousal with high status men), but the average man is wifed up during his prime years, and often spending his younger years pretending that he enjoys hooking up with moderately good-looking girls as much as he would with real hotties.

This trend is concerning, as I want to have a wife and kids some day, yet I would probably fall into this category.  I consider cheating Don Draper style on one’s wife to be one of the worst things you can do to someone you have decided to build a life with.  Growing up, I always have looked at men who cheat on their wives at that age with a bitter scorn.  This is inpart because of one of my high school friends’ Dad. Jen, a girl that I beta-orbited during high school’s dad ended up having an entirely different apartment, car, life, and (surprise!) younger, hotter girlfriend in the city whilst he was seemingly ‘happily’ married to Jen’s mom.  Jen found this out when she was 19 and it completely shattered her worldview.  She started slutting it up bigtime.  My reaction was, “Jen’s dad is such an asshole, I will never cheat on my wife if that if it is the last thing I do. I could never do that to my kids and to her.”

But alas, the sexual marketplace is a place where hearts are broken, and the laws of biology trump our manufactured concept of ‘true love.’  Chris Rock said “A man is only as faithful as his best option.”  Who really knows how they would act in that situation?  How do I know that her dad wasn’t getting stood up for sex by her mom for years and finally said to hell with it?  And now Jen hates her dad.

So, Jen’s dad was demonized for embracing his prime value in the sexual marketplace, while Jen’s mom could have been a big slut in college and he would have been expected to just forget that, since it’s in the past.

Now, this is a simplification of a very complex situation.  Jen’s dad could have been a huge slut in college also.  Jen’s mom could have been virtuous.  Whatever.  My point is simply that in the modern, natural male sexuality is overly demonized, whereas women are empowered to do what they want during their peak years.

These are averages, and as humans we are not bound by our biological urges, thankfully.  But a quick glimpse at modern western society shows how much of a self indulgent culture we have become and gives us an idea of where we are headed.  We want what we want, and we want it now.  Why not self-indulge?  YOLO.

I want this food/beer/TV show/sex/porn and I want it now.  I don’t want to have to wait.  Three minutes later you are done eating/drinking/watching/having sex/masturbating and all you’re left with is your dick in your hand and a vague feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction.

This is our culture.  From the moment a person is born now, he is inundated with this very message of self-indulgence.  Join Match.com and you’ll be happy. Drink a coca cola and you’ll be happy.  Have a Miller and you’ll be happy.  Watch MTV and you’ll get the latest, best entertainment.  None of it works longterm.  It’s all surface level indulgence.

My Grandpa and Grandma would have been damned to hell before they got a divorce.  They’ve been married for over 60 fucking years.  Just wasn’t something that was an option.  Now though, YOU come first.  Yes, I am talking to YOU, reader.  YOUR happiness. Newsflash: marriage was NEVER all hot sex and passion.  Getting married to the same person and staying together for a long time isn’t going to be easy, no matter HOW compatible you are with your significant other.  The difference is that many of our generation puts our own happiness first, before those of our kids.  Our consumerist culture trains us to do so.  And sexual contentment is something that is always on the human brain.  Hooking up with an attractive man or woman is a good feeling.  It is validating.  It is in our nature.  The way sluttiness is trending, both men and women are going to have to become a lot more okay with their partner having had a high number of sexual partners before them and maybe during them.  This goes against the grain of conventional manosphere wisdom.  But it’s just something I don’t see changing.  Girls are gonna enjoy their early 20s, guys are gonna be more desired later in life.  There is no easy solution.  Well, a threesome with your wife and a young hottie, maybe?

Technological advances (hookup apps) + birth control (no age for more after pill law passed) + 3rd wave feminism = lots of sluttiness, lots of self indulgence. Goddamn are we headed for some interesting times as a society.

23 responses to “Men and Women have Different Prime Sexual Years: Is there a solution?

  1. I feel as a young male I am experiencing the result of the opposite sex being at their prime while I am not. There is indeed a feeling of exclusion for me. I see in front of me girls my own age looking very attractive and demanding things from a man that I cannot yet provide. I read field reports of PUA’s and other guys in the manosphere who are into their 30’s and are banging girls from 18- 22, I bristle a bit. Girls my age have found their prime and are getting the results their inner mechanism yearns for, while I’m just sittin’ here ya know…

    • Ruxman, date cougars while your still young. Then as you get older date younger women. Win/win for everybody!

  2. Its really weird, still, that I can successfully land women younger than me or older fairly easily. I’m 27 so 18-22 works easily and a well aged 29-32 is easy to land.

    But dear lord, women 24-28 are just outright bitches. Horrible, ballbusting bitches. They dont want to have a good time, they all hate men, they all ‘just’ got out of a serious relationship. They hate the world and want feminism to burn it all down. No other age group outright refuses to talk to me, be polite, or actually start raging like they do.

    The younger women look up to you. The older women want to deny their age and relive their glory years. For women your own age, you always seem to represent everything they hate about men and relationships – they’ll never see you for you

    • ha, you’re not the first person I’ve heard this from. Although when I was 21, a couple of the horniest women I was with were 24 and 26. I think they already knew their prime years were ending though.

      • I think it’s the Sexual Uncanny Valley. Any man their own age reminds them too much of their own age and insecurities. They need some distance.

  3. “Is there a solution?” – well, the one that immediately leapt out at me, before I even read the body of the post was “Yes – marry a 23 year old when you’re 36”, surely?

  4. “The way sluttiness is trending, both men and women are going to have to become a lot more okay with their partner having had a high number of sexual partners before them and maybe during them.”

    If men didn’t think it was okay the slutiness would end. But most do and that’s why we have the problem of selfish women. They are mearly reflecting our worst nightmares.

    • “If men didn’t think it was okay the slutiness would end.”

      I would take that a step further in that a lot of men are apathetic to it. We are in a time where all this girl power stuff is being shouted loudly and where it’s ok to make men look like putzes. Some dudes have been ground down so much that they don’t care about mileage, they’re just happy that they have someone to save them from the rouge ways and put them in their place.

    • “They are mearly reflecting our worst nightmares.”

      Men and women are simply reflecting our more primal natures onto each other. In times past, we had social conditioning to keep our more primitive instincts in check. Young men had their elders to provide a good example and ample coercion to ‘man up’ if you will. They where told why loose women weren’t acceptable and why they should shun the ‘player’ approach in terms of dating. They where told to marry a ‘good girl’ and contribute to society.

      Women where also trained in how to remain chaste and the dangers of being loose. Slut shaming was used to keep their ‘gina tingles’ under control and single motherhood wasn’t the mark of a hero, but of a woman who was judged harshly.

      Society by and large would reinforce this instruction, by chastising the unmarried older man as ‘lazy’ and the loose woman as a harlot. What I think many people forget is that although we human beings are the masters of our domain here on Earth, we still have many primitive instincts running in our reptile brains. If we don’t try to control them, then we have the world we see now.

  5. I like the graph but am a bit confused. Does that mean if I’m a 33 year old pulling a 23 year old that I’ve “dated up”? Seems pretty easy to do.

    • maybe, but not always. Depends on the hotness of the girl and your own attractiveness level. You could definitely pull a hotter 23 year old at 33 than you could at 23, though, that is the point.

  6. Pingback: 30 Is Not The New 20 | The Phantom Tollbooth·

  7. This post is so interesting. I agree with you 100% about the self indulgence factor. Now it is acceptable, even commendable to put yourself first, if not you are weak and a “push over”. What we have to understand that not all of marriage is just a walk in the park.. Men and women differ so much and the lack of communication and understanding between each other is what is making it more difficult. I do believe that a good man can be faithful, do I believe it’ll be easy for him? Definitely not. I have to accept that there is always going to be desires or fantasies for other women going on somewhere in his mind, the key is communication and meeting each other’s needs. For example I believe a man will prefer to have a woman who takes care of appearance. If a woman takes care of how she looks and is also a good wife, and is also meeting her husband’s needs and respecting and encouraging her husband’s masculinity he is less likely to stray. Of course there is always the lure of “something new”, but that is where self control comes into it. A strong man has to fight to maintain self control. It’s not easy and we have to understand that and credit our men’s efforts everyday. Having said that, I think in today’s world you are right, too many people are too easy to give up on marriage. Marriage is something for life, it is not temporary, we all make mistakes, we are only human, sometimes we have to find it in our hearts to forgive and move forward.

    The age of “prime sexual years” also makes sense. I don’t know a solution but I know that some young women can stay virtuous, it is possible and it is rewarding. But it also makes sense to me why young women often marry older men, younger women don’t have to succumb to their sexual urges, they can just marry instead so they are not giving away the goods to every other guy. Older men have already had their fun and are ready for marriage. I know many men who have waited until the age of 40 or late 30’s to marry, and I can say that that was when they were ready. Everybody’s different. The solution for young guys who haven’t reached the prime of their sexual years yet? I don’t know. My heart goes out to them, these situations are never easy, but they are a reality, a little understanding can go a long way.

    • “But it also makes sense to me why young women often marry older men, younger women don’t have to succumb to their sexual urges, they can just marry instead so they are not giving away the goods to every other guy. Older men have already had their fun and are ready for marriage.”

      Men who have “had their fun” are best paired with women who have had theirs’. They can share all the STDs they want that way.

      The rest of us non-STD ridden women prefer to mate with our equally STD-free counterparts.

  8. “Growing up, I always have looked at men who cheat on their wives at that age with a bitter scorn. This is inpart because of one of my high school friends’ Dad. Jen, a girl that I beta-orbited during high school’s dad ended up having an entirely different apartment, car, life, and (surprise!) younger, hotter girlfriend in the city whilst he was seemingly ‘happily’ married to Jen’s mom. Jen found this out when she was 19 and it completely shattered her worldview. She started slutting it up bigtime. My reaction was, “Jen’s dad is such an asshole, I will never cheat on my wife if that if it is the last thing I do. I could never do that to my kids and to her.”

    But alas, the sexual marketplace is a place where hearts are broken, and the laws of biology trump our manufactured concept of ‘true love.’ Chris Rock said “A man is only as faithful as his best option.” Who really knows how they would act in that situation? How do I know that her dad wasn’t getting stood up for sex by her mom for years and finally said to hell with it? And now Jen hates her dad.

    So, Jen’s dad was demonized for embracing his prime value in the sexual marketplace, while Jen’s mom could have been a big slut in college and he would have been expected to just forget that, since it’s in the past.

    Now, this is a simplification of a very complex situation. Jen’s dad could have been a huge slut in college also. Jen’s mom could have been virtuous. Whatever. My point is simply that in the modern, natural male sexuality is overly demonized, whereas women are empowered to do what they want during their peak years.”

    – There is no excuse for cheating. NONE.

    If one is feeling dissatisfied in some way with their spouse, that needs to be clearly communicated to the spouse and there is no death of marriage counselors and other forms of help out there.

    Whether or not one was a “slut” in college, once one takes a vow of monogamy, that’s it! Neither Jen’s mom or dad were married in college so whether or not either of them were “sluts” has nothing to do with the marriage. And if either of them were considered about the others’ pre-marital “slut status”, well that is something to be worked out BEFORE marriage, not after.

    If a husband or wife is in a situation where he or she feels seriously tempted to cheat, the right thing to do is to go to one’s spouse and tell him/her and ask for HELP. Who knows? Maybe he or she is going through something similar and a mutual arrangement such as an “open marriage” could be worked out.

    But UNDER NO circumstances should one lie, cheat, and sneak around.

    By the way, Jen’s dad was scum, and not just because he cheated on his wife, but because he CHEATED ON HIS CHILD.

    I can assure you that Jen took a harder hit from this than her mother.

    When even single parents should not be dating, even a million fold for parents who are still married!

    I consider what Jen’s dad did to be nothing short of child abuse.

  9. While googleing when a female hits her prime time, I came across this article. It is interesting, but one thing I have to disagree on is- it is not merely just men that will cheat on their spouses, females also. What kept me reading this article is about how men had gotten married young and all of a sudden they’re in their prime time being married, hence they commit adultery. Although, it goes both ways. When a spouse is lacking sex, lacking anything for that matter, a spouse has a tendency to commit adultery. On the other hand, it goes against morals. In today’s society in my opinion divorce has become the norm, a trend, and there isn’t any values, convictions towards vows. Yes, I have ovaries, but I grew up with only brothers and could grow some balls, but overall this was an interesting article.

  10. “Given that this graph is accurate, it is easy for men to get slightly bitter from a pure self-interest standpoint that they were never able to maximize their SMV in the hookup world.”

    Except the graph is predicated on a man’s OPINION on what he believes is the male-female peak. Given that the metrics involved are subjective in nature, his argument is nothing more than a position.

    • “Except the graph is predicated on a man’s OPINION on what he believes is the male-female peak. Given that the metrics involved are subjective in nature, his argument is nothing more than a position.”

      So are you saying you think that 30 year old women are, on average, hotter than 20 year olds?

      • Prime years (18-23)
        says you

        I would say 18-25, but here is no such thing as right. There is no such thing as wrong. Therefore we are neither both or either.

  11. The graph was obviously drawn by a man. You really think a 45-year-old man is on the same level of attractiveness as a 28-year-old woman? Not a chance. The vast majority of 28-year-old women will find that 45-year-old man hitting on her to be extremely creepy. And you’re just dreamin’ if you think at 48 you will be as attractive as when you were 30.

  12. I had this discussion once and a good point was brought up that is often overlooked. Peak attractiveness differs depending on what you’re looking for (and also on the age of the person who is looking, but that’s a different discussion). If a guy is just looking for a hook-up, then yes, women in their early twenties are the most attractive. But if he’s looking for marriage, would the 21-year-old college girl who still plays beer pong really be a more attractive prospect than the more mature 28-year-old woman? Similarly, a woman would choose to marry a 32-year old financially stable man over the 25-year-old guy who still thinks he’s a frat boy, but it would be the reverse if she’s just looking for a casual hook-up. The problem with the graph presented in this article (and many people’s perception of the wide gender gap in peak attractiveness) is that it’s comparing women’s peak “hook-up” attractiveness to men’s peak “marriage” attractiveness. When you compare peak attractiveness for the same type of relationship, the difference isn’t that wide. There was a study that showed that men and women’s “marriage” peak really only differs by 4 years (women 30, men 34). In dating, however, more men tend to be on the side of “having fun”, so a woman’s “hook-up” attractiveness is considered more often, while more women tend to look for something a little more serious when they date, so a man’s “marriage” attractiveness might seem more important, which explains why the graph above is depicted the way it is.

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