If I can go one level above your question, for at least a generation, maybe more*, most young people aren’t getting into frequent sexual relationships. Scott Alexander explains here, in one of the most upvoted comments of all time, why it seems most people, whenever they are or were young, seemed to know a few people who had lots of sex, but weren’t or aren’t themselves having lots of sex. His model seems to hold for heterosexual men and women, which is most people anyway. Essentially, for both men and women, there is a negative skew for sexiness, i.e., which people are most sexually attractive and/or having the most sex. So, it is only the sexiest men and sexiest women having sex with each other often, and the sexiest men and women mostly don’t have sex with people who are less than the sexiest. People who are in between the average and the sexiest may have a moderate amount of sex, but still far less than the sexiest people. Men and women of around average sexiness are having sex infrequently, or not at all. This doesn’t mean “average” levels of sexiness are utterly unsexy. For example, as a heterosexual man, I perceive most women as moderately attractive, and it’s only the rare exception of a woman who proves the rule that people are generally attractive, that is the woman I find utterly unattractive, or ugly. I might be generalizing from my own experience too much, though. Assuming most heterosexual men find most heterosexual women “attractive-ish”, and visa-versa, it’s interesting they’re not having sex with each other.
Anyway, the function of how much sex a person has based on whatever qualities count as attractive seems more like a quadratic function than a linear one. The failure of most of us not in the top tiers of sexiness to have sex is a coordination problem. Their are other factors, which I think are covered in my original post.
*I think as North American culture was more sexually conservative in previous generations, people were just having less sex. I’m not sure about this. I’ve watched some historical documentaries pointing out how the early twentieth century and late nineteenth century people were less puritanical than modern pop culture would have us belief. It’s not like in all places with all people sex outside of marriage, in the year 1920 or 1890, was utterly taboo. There are ebbs and flows in how sexually liberal or conservative North America has been going back at least a century. I figure the further you go back in time, though, the more sexually conservative our culture was on average.
If I can go one level above your question, for at least a generation, maybe more*, most young people aren’t getting into frequent sexual relationships. Scott Alexander explains here, in one of the most upvoted comments of all time, why it seems most people, whenever they are or were young, seemed to know a few people who had lots of sex, but weren’t or aren’t themselves having lots of sex. His model seems to hold for heterosexual men and women, which is most people anyway. Essentially, for both men and women, there is a negative skew for sexiness, i.e., which people are most sexually attractive and/or having the most sex. So, it is only the sexiest men and sexiest women having sex with each other often, and the sexiest men and women mostly don’t have sex with people who are less than the sexiest. People who are in between the average and the sexiest may have a moderate amount of sex, but still far less than the sexiest people. Men and women of around average sexiness are having sex infrequently, or not at all. This doesn’t mean “average” levels of sexiness are utterly unsexy. For example, as a heterosexual man, I perceive most women as moderately attractive, and it’s only the rare exception of a woman who proves the rule that people are generally attractive, that is the woman I find utterly unattractive, or ugly. I might be generalizing from my own experience too much, though. Assuming most heterosexual men find most heterosexual women “attractive-ish”, and visa-versa, it’s interesting they’re not having sex with each other.
Anyway, the function of how much sex a person has based on whatever qualities count as attractive seems more like a quadratic function than a linear one. The failure of most of us not in the top tiers of sexiness to have sex is a coordination problem. Their are other factors, which I think are covered in my original post.
*I think as North American culture was more sexually conservative in previous generations, people were just having less sex. I’m not sure about this. I’ve watched some historical documentaries pointing out how the early twentieth century and late nineteenth century people were less puritanical than modern pop culture would have us belief. It’s not like in all places with all people sex outside of marriage, in the year 1920 or 1890, was utterly taboo. There are ebbs and flows in how sexually liberal or conservative North America has been going back at least a century. I figure the further you go back in time, though, the more sexually conservative our culture was on average.