FA breakup

mrob, is there selection bias in who you're talking to?

The rest sounds like it's about compatibility. With a non-transactional approach and adequate compatibility, you can view what needs to get done as teamwork. It works as long as overall life goals are compatible. Yes, you have the needs of an additional person too, but if the goals are all aligned then it can still work out. And more love grows out of the team fulfilling goals and the trust that develops with the partnership. Which you need because sometimes one person will need to pull more of the weight due to life stuff, other times the other will (like if someone is sick or loses their job), and that's where seeing it as transactional will breed contempt and tank things.

This is a difficult pivot coming off of traditional gender views, though. Men make money and only one breadwinner is adequate, women keep house. It was a team in a much more rigid way that not everyone enjoyed but there wasn't really much choice in the matter. And it was often extremely transactional, in its way. If marriage was to "deny" men their nature of not settling down to create more stability, it still trapped women too in forcing them to be overly dependent and stunted in their pursuits.

I think some of the difficulty in modern relationships is our western societies do very little to teach healthy relationship skills and there's been a history of pitting genders against each other instead of accepting that people are just people. There's differences between genders but there's also differences between personalities and character and attachment in all people... you can find examples of everything across genders and we're not even getting into fluidity outside the binary definitions of gender. So what it comes down to is, to break out of traditional gender roles you've got to figure out both people's roles and compatibility as you go along in a standard two-person-couple relationship instead of having it already prescribed. You need to create it. If you don't know where to start or don't want to do the work involved in creating something or simply want to stick with traditional gender roles (as plenty of people do) in spite some of our society moving away from that, that can be a recipe for complete unhappiness, wondering why you'd even bother (if not for kids), giving up... it certainly took me several relationships and too many situationships to figure out what works, and I never succeeded in doing it until I first got square with knowing myself and what I even wanted. Once I did, I still needed to find someone compatible.

It's also easier on the economy of a society to convince people they should buy things to be happier rather than learn relationship skills or create and build a relationship that looks different than what we're set up for. So again... lack of alignment in goals and incentives tanks things. That's why we don't learn this relationship stuff unless we seek it out (or were lucky enough to have parents / adult caretakers who were emotionally healthy enough and mindful enough to teach it). Too many people to profit off letting confusion and unhappiness reign, so our society doesn't think to introspect and prioritize it. Even though in the bigger picture, I'd bet having healthier and happier relationships would make us richer (less productivity hours lost to depression and vices, better public health, etc).

Sorry to the OP for the tangent!

I believe there have been studies done about this and that the male/ female ratio to promiscuity is actually smaller than initially thought. The difference being that women are simply pickier for their short term partners. Perhaps the biology still plays a role that the woman will pick a masculine man for a short term fling - while not in a relationship with the person, she still picks by genetic material, while men apparently are much less discerning about their genetic material carriers so to speak. (I wonder why?), when choosing short term partners. But that both men and women and all middle genders have equal capacity for long and short term relationships.

The main difference with picking a short term partner is that men will go for younger (and beautiful), and less intelligent, and women will go for more distinguished, older or more manly men. But this whole thing starts to dangerously lean towards men and pedophilia for me. So the gender/ nature argument is rather a slippery slope.

You make some really good points Annie and Alexandra. And I do recall seeing that research somewhere myself actually Annie. I will have to rethink my statement when I have more time perhaps....

I think the point I was trying to make is more so the sentiment toward the situation, rather than ratios of promiscuity. Especially in reference to what the OP was saying.
I find a lot of women annoyed when a guy tries to revisit an old fling just for sex. But if a woman tries to revisit an old male acquintaince just for sex he'd (not always), but very often be quiet happy with that.

I would also say that whilst I can't speak for all, or even many men, my own taste in women is quiet the opposite of what you said, even for a short term fling. I prefer older women who I consider very intellectual. And in fact most of my close friends are dating or seeing older women. I have had a couple of 'situationships' with women more than 15 years my senior. Though I will agree they are often very emotionally immature perhaps.

The stereotypical 19 year old pretty but dim 'party girl' type has never held any appeal. I would find them more irritating to be around than anything else most likely. I am more likely to find a woman intellectually attractive if she is able to speak in depth about cerebral topics and challenge me occasionally, not unlike some of you ladies on here 😁. I don't think I'm alone amongst men regarding this.