Promiscuity Is Great but It Comes with a Price — I Learned It the Hard Way
Casual dating can be a lot of fun, but few understand the true psychological ramifications of it
A new study entitled “Does a longer sexual resume affect marriage rates?”, has brought into question the idea that multiple partners lower the chance of people getting married. So, it throws into question the idea that people who are promiscuous lower their desirability as a partner by being promiscuous.
What the study found was that people who are presently promiscuous have a lower chance of getting married. However, if the promiscuous behaviour is in the past then promiscuity does not affect a person’s chances of securing a long-term relationship. That means body count is largely irrelevant when it comes to securing a long-term relationship.
Personally, I’m not really surprised at this as I’ve said for years promiscuity does not per se have any influence on whether a person gets into a long-term relationship and gets married or not, there are many other factors at play.
Environment, education, career, background, personality, upbringing, all these factors and so much more are much more important and play a much larger role in deciding whether a person will engage in promiscuity, get married, get divorced, all of it.
I also firmly believe that all the many studies which show that those who have been promiscuous are less likely to be happy in marriage, and are more likely to get divorced, are seeing more causation rather than the past promiscuity being the source of the lower level of happiness.
But at the same time, I am not one of those who believe that it is all causation, because I’ve since come to the conclusion that it is more complex.
I still do believe that the past promiscuity link to a higher divorce rate and lower marriage satisfaction is mostly causation, but at the same time, I have come to the belief that there is some fire to go with the smoke that being promiscuous in your past does lower the chances of being happy in a long-term relationship.
So, your body count does perhaps matter, at least on some levels for some people.
Promiscuity does come with a mental price — not all pay it, but it exists
I was highly promiscuous in my younger days; my body count is likely pushing 30 if I’m being honest. People think the main dangers of promiscuity are STDs, sexual violence, and societal persecution. However, even without these factors, promiscuity can come with a price, and I’m not talking about the societal-based price, which is well documented and mostly felt by women (even though it shouldn’t be, it should be felt by no one), I’m talking the psychological.
When I speak with highly promiscuous men about their promiscuity, many recount that they hardly remember any of their partners — something I don’t hear half as much from women. They tell me that they only really remember the ones they built connections with — so the ones they dated. The others are just fleeting images. One even described them like songs on the radio, “If you only hear it once unless it is exceptional you are not going to remember it.”
I don’t want to go into the rights or wrongs of this form of thinking, and I am not going to say what I thought when I heard this guy turn women into random songs you hear on the radio, you can probably guess. But I did ask a friend of mine who works as a psychologist about treating sex with people in this way, and he said the danger of this type of thinking is that it can lead people to separate the idea of sex so much from connections, that it can become increasingly difficult to form lasting sexual connections.
But he also highlighted that it is likely this is only during the period that they are engaging in promiscuous behaviour. He also said that men typically find it a lot easier to do this than women to the point that in men, being promiscuous is on every level easier.
I can fully believe this mainly through my work as a sex worker, but also through my friendships with men on the gay scene, the way many men are able to separate sex from connections, from people, from everything, is something that even to this day in a way I’m on one level envious of, but at the same time, I’m not sure I’d want to be able to do it — at least not when it comes to having sex for pleasure.
Truthfully, I don’t think I’d ever want to have sex with someone for pleasure unless I felt a connection with them. That’s just me. But anyway, I wish to focus on the first part of what my friend said, because the recent study does back it up, that when people engage in promiscuity you are much less likely to form long-term connections, but if you stop this type of behaviour, the game changes.
The study calls promiscuity a form of seasonal behaviour, when you are in the season of promiscuity, long-term connections are unlikely, but it doesn’t stop you from entering a season of looking for a long-term connection and succeeding.
This makes a lot of sense, because when you think of it, if you are being promiscuous then it is different to when you are looking for a lasting relationship. So, it makes sense that a person who is presently having fun being promiscuous would struggle to form a long-lasting relationship simply because the mindset is different.
But the good thing is, if a person wants to find a long-term relationship, the study shows that having been promiscuous in the past does not limit your chances of success. But it still does risk causing problems, the study does not say this or cover this, but I am.
It hurts to be just a piece of meat — except not everyone
I was talking to a guy that I knew from university; we were never close, we only knew each other through a module we shared one year, and that one year was close to two decades back. But on a night out at a party we had once had sex, it was just a one-night thing, he was not a guy I would ever want to date, but on the night, I felt we connected on a sexual level which is why we had sex. It was hot sex; he was into it I was into it, and it was a fun night.
There was one problem, on our reunion, he didn’t remember it happened. We had not been drinking the night we had sex either. This is not a case where he could have just been pretending he didn’t remember, when we met up again, he told me how he had always really liked me, and it was a shame we had never got together.
I mentioned that he should have said so after we had spent the night together. The blank look on his face said everything, and the confusion after I told him we did spend the night together one time simply made it worse. He then tried to say he did remember. I didn’t believe him, so I said it happened at a different place and he told me he remembered now, then I told him where it actually happened. He then admitted the truth — he had no recollection — and apologised.
Forgetting the fact that he clearly had been lying about having once been into me — no doubt to try to get laid in the present day — having worked as a sex worker, and knowing that the majority of the people who came to see me would not remember me, I didn’t think a guy I barely knew and had never been much interested in not remembering we had sex would bother me.
But, as much as it aggrieves me to say so, it really did. Even though it was just a fleeting one-night thing, I felt that in the moment we had been together we had connected. That’s why I had sex with him that night. You don’t forget people you connect with, even if it’s a fleeting connection that happened near two decades ago.
That was my mistake. He never built that connection, he just had sex with me. To him, in that moment I was no different to a guy paying me when I was working as a sex worker. I was little different to a porno he may have watched to get himself off on — nobody remembers the porn stars they use to get themselves off on.
You might think I felt angry with him or felt used by him. But that’s not what I felt, I felt he had had the right attitude, it was me who made the mistake of allowing a connection to form, and of wanting one to have a one-night stand.
Even though it was a fleeting connection it was a sexual connection and I regret having been a person who, when I was promiscuous, focused on having sex with the people I connected with. More than that, I regretted being a person that thought that connections were needed when it came to promiscuity, the opposite is true. Connections and promiscuity create problems.
The problems with connections and promiscuity
Outside of my time as a sex worker, I have never had sex with any person that I did not feel a connection with. As like said my body count is close to 30 (excluding sex work), that means I built up sexual connections with close to 30 people.
I regret this, and this is because every sexual connection I have ever formed remains with me. I remember the people vividly — or at least the feeling of them. Even the one-night stands and the short flings. I remember their good points — even the imagined ones — and often I find myself comparing my present partner against those sometimes real and most often imagined good points.
It is like I have merged together all the good points — real and imagined — from all the people I have formed sexual connections with and created a perfect person that no one individual could ever be. And it is not the men and women I had relationships with that really do the damage, I got to know their bad points and so can counter such thoughts with them. It is more the ones where I only saw the good traits in them because I wasn’t around them long enough to learn who they were — this includes even the one-nighters.
To put this into perspective, all the people I had fun with during my promiscuous periods, I built a connection with but because I only got to experience the good side of them, because I only got to feel the fantasy of them, all of them live in my head to this day, not as they are, but how I imagine they would be.
Even though I know these images are illusions, my mind cannot escape wandering over them. That means my former sexual partners, the ones that meant the least to me, permanently play a part in my present relationship, and every time my mind makes a connection between my present partner and something good from one of my past partners from my promiscuous periods, even if that good is most likely imagined, my present partner diminishes just a little bit for that moment.
He always rises up again, and he always comes out on top compared to my past relationships. But the fact is, compared to the people that meant the least to me that I had sex with, my mind for some reason every now and then, uses the images of them born through my connections with them to diminish my partner.
That hurts me. As such, the effect your past partners, specifically the ones you connected with, can have on your present relationships in my view is the biggest downside that comes from promiscuity.
Not everyone will feel it, and I can’t say whether it’s felt more by men or women, I’m inclined to think as women typically — at least when it comes to promiscuity — want connections more than men, it’s probably more a female problem, but who knows.
Regardless, for any who does feel it truly can have a lasting effect on your ability to form deep and happy bonds in long-term relationships, mainly because of the constant comparison your mind makes between the past and the present.
Final words
Looking back, I would tell my younger self if you insist on building connections when being promiscuous, tread carefully as those connections may stay with you — whether you want them to or not.
Or better yet, if you are going to be promiscuous, forget about the connections and just have sex with people you think are hot or that you think you can have a fun time with. So, do it the way the guy who forgot me did it, as even though it pains me to think it, he probably did sleeping around the right way.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, you may also enjoy the following:
Study link: Does a longer sexual resume affect marriage rates?
Other links of interest:
Does Sexual History Affect Marital Happiness?
Counterintuitive Trends in the Link Between Premarital Sex and Marital Stability
