Based Camp - Are We Monogamous？

00:00:00.000 Hello, Malcolm.

00:00:01.360 Hello, Simone. 0.69

00:00:03.480 Today, we are going to discuss an interesting topic, which is polyamory.

00:00:09.120 We have discussed it in the past, but we didn't really go too deep on the topic.

00:00:14.700 And I think it deserves a deeper dive, one, because it's becoming increasingly common

00:00:20.120 within especially the urban monoculture, like the urban populations and the progressive movement.

00:00:26.600 But I've also seen it among many of our more successful conservative friends for a different

00:00:33.600 reason.

00:00:34.420 And we can get into why we're seeing it in those circles as well.

00:00:38.500 That sounds good to me.

00:00:40.580 Would you like to know more?

00:00:47.460 But first, we should do a little history lesson, because I think that there's this perception

00:00:51.960 that we, you know, if you're talking about the Western tradition more broadly, has been

00:00:58.500 historically a monogamous tradition.

00:01:01.500 And that is true to the extent that most people have been monogamous.

00:01:07.300 Yeah, I thought you were going to say, this is true for poor people. 0.98

00:01:10.680 It's true for poor people. 0.98

00:01:12.400 When a culture is polygynous, one man, many women, there's actually been no stable culture 0.95

00:01:19.320 in history with anything close to what we call polyamory in our society.

00:01:23.520 Usually when you have a multiple partner culture, you have polygyny, which is one man, many women.

00:01:29.940 However, there has been one case I know of, of many men to one woman.

00:01:34.320 And this was like in Tibet, like it was in a high resource, scarce region of the mountains.

00:01:39.080 But it's also, I think, commonly with brothers.

00:01:41.700 Yeah, it was basically only done with brothers.

00:01:43.680 And it makes sense why that would work, because then the guy knows that the kids are related

00:01:48.240 to him.

00:01:49.120 And it was meant as a form of population control was in those cultures.

00:01:52.500 So that's how it ended up developing and being intergenerationally successful.

00:01:56.220 And it was also cultures that didn't need to worry about neighbors raiding them because

00:01:59.760 they lived in extremely, like they were not competing with their surrounding cultures.

00:02:04.460 They were more competing with their environment, which is why it was able to become stable.

00:02:09.380 But certainly no culture that's ever really spread.

00:02:11.320 But why this is relevant, so if you talk about long-lived, stable, polygynous cultures,

00:02:16.980 there's some Jewish groups that fall into this.

00:02:19.240 There's some groups in Africa that fall into this.

00:02:21.900 Some Muslim groups fall into this.

00:02:23.760 You're typically looking at around 5% of the population will have multiple wives.

00:02:29.040 People assume it's much more.

00:02:30.680 Now, historically, there have been short-lived polygynous societies, like the Mormon population 1.00

00:02:36.480 group, where this number was higher, at the height of that part of Mormon history.

00:02:42.440 It was, I think, around 20% to 23% of men had multiple wives.

00:02:47.700 But it was still the vast minority.

00:02:50.880 Now, where this gets interesting is, if I look within our existing culture right now,

00:02:55.500 like the various cultural groups, probably one of the ones I'd say is most pro, what we'd

00:03:00.460 call monogamy, is the Catholic group, right?

00:03:03.580 However, if you look, historically speaking, so we're looking to traditional Catholicism,

00:03:09.420 right?

00:03:10.060 You're looking at the monarchies of Louis XIV, right?

00:03:14.000 And so when you were saying you would write a book about all of the mistresses he had that

00:03:17.360 everyone knew he had.

00:03:19.360 Yeah.

00:03:20.200 Antonia Fraser wrote a great book called Love and Louis XIV, where it's a long book,

00:03:26.400 and it just details all of his lovers.

00:03:28.920 And this isn't just secret affairs on the side.

00:03:31.200 This is, you know, people who were titled people.

00:03:33.520 I mean, like, it was very well known.

00:03:35.660 Now, the Catholic Church didn't like it, and they kept saying, don't do this.

00:03:38.560 And one of his lovers may have been rumored to actually marry him in the end secretly,

00:03:43.300 though that's not, like, historically, officially documented.

00:03:46.680 So there's interplay.

00:03:47.900 And, like, the Catholic Church definitely has a relationship with not being cool with it,

00:03:53.960 like, officially, but sort of in practice, they're like, I mean, for example, with King

00:03:59.780 Henry VIII, right?

00:04:01.060 Like, they were, I think they probably would have annulled his marriage and allowed him 0.99

00:04:04.700 to jump from one marriage to the next for convenience if there was not a familiar tie

00:04:09.360 with his first wife and the Pope.

00:04:12.100 Yeah.

00:04:12.360 The Catholic Church, I would say, in practice.

00:04:14.800 And they regularly, you know, allowed it.

00:04:17.380 So keep in mind, you know, Louis was king via divine.

00:04:20.440 That is what gave him the right to monarchy within his cultural context.

00:04:25.060 When he's saying, why am I king?

00:04:26.500 I am king because of the church.

00:04:29.000 And, you know, that did not, him having multiple partners and everyone knowing.

00:04:33.720 And the extent to which everyone knew, I really can be sort of understated or cannot be overstated.

00:04:39.600 Like, the mistresses, who he was choosing as a mistress at the time, would determine fashion

00:04:44.440 within, like, the court culture.

00:04:48.620 Oh, yeah.

00:04:48.900 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:49.460 I mean, even to the point where some types of court dress, like the style of deshabillé,

00:04:56.360 which basically means sort of, like, undress, were said to have been developed when mistress,

00:05:03.300 like, certain mistress was pregnant, just so, like, it was a little bit less corseted

00:05:07.280 so she could have her kind of belly legs together. 1.00

00:05:09.440 I would be pregnant better, yeah. 0.82

00:05:10.360 Yeah.

00:05:10.620 So, like, literally, that is how pervasive it was and open it was.

00:05:14.440 Now, I mean, like, this is France.

00:05:17.440 France was really, like, you know, known for that kind of thing.

00:05:20.420 You're actually, like, the only monarchy where it happened.

00:05:22.480 I chose France because it's one of the most famous in pop culture, well-documented ones.

00:05:26.620 And also, you write a book about all his mistresses that you would be well aware of that.

00:05:30.360 It's such a good book.

00:05:31.920 Talk to the topic.

00:05:33.040 But I think even within our modern society, so if you look at America today, let's say America 10 years ago or something,

00:05:40.640 people could say, oh, this was a predominantly monogamous society.

00:05:44.380 And there was a great South Park episode on this.

00:05:47.360 And the central joke of the episode is a bunch of males on, like, TV and scientists were trying to figure out why rich men kept cheating on their wives.

00:05:58.220 And obviously, the joke was every man knew, but they had to pretend like it was very confusing why men kept cheating on women when they became super famous and wealthy.

00:06:07.360 And this was framed around the Tiger Woods controversy and then some other controversies.

00:06:11.120 And they would give a monkey a bunch of money and it would go out and cheat on its wife. 0.95

00:06:14.580 And they were like, this is such a bizarre phenomenon.

00:06:17.580 But the joke being is it's obvious why this happens.

00:06:22.300 However, I think it's not obvious why it happens.

00:06:25.740 And that's what I want to dig into.

00:06:28.220 Yeah.

00:06:28.420 I think everyone's trying to say the quiet part quietly, and we would rather say the quiet part out loud, right?

00:06:34.960 Yes.

00:06:35.540 Well, so let's talk about some things which is just not why it happens, okay?

00:06:39.520 One is people say it happens because biology.

00:06:43.280 There's a lot of biological instincts that humans have that we are able to sublimate.

00:06:48.600 So it's not – I don't think it's just because of biology at least.

00:06:52.600 And we don't see the mirror phenomenon.

00:06:54.660 We do not see, you know, wealthy women cheating on their husbands at really high rates.

00:06:58.960 Right.

00:06:59.500 Or having these, like, basically open relationships.

00:07:03.060 So what's actually going on here is this market pressures.

00:07:06.040 Hypergamy is the reason this is happening. 0.98

00:07:12.000 The same market pressures that lead to your average woman, like average attractiveness, average wealth, average – like if you're just marking women on a scale of 0 to 100, and, like, your average woman is a 50, your average woman has much, much, much more dating market power than your average man. 0.50

00:07:30.260 Like, everyone knows this.

00:07:32.100 Like, the famous Tinder study where they found that your average man, like if you rank men – so your median man is liked on Tinder by less than 1% of women.

00:07:44.740 That's so incredibly, like, low power.

00:07:47.880 Whereas your average woman – I forgot what it was. 0.95

00:07:49.400 I think it might have been around 50% of men, like your average woman on Tinder, which just shows this huge disparity in market.

00:07:55.760 And because most guys, like, fall into this average territory, in their world, this is what they're focused on, the unfair market dynamics here.

00:08:03.740 However, if you're sort of around, like, the ultra-wealthy or elite society, you're going to notice much more the opposite problem, which is a top 1% man has dramatically more market value than a top 1% woman. 0.53

00:08:21.300 It's astronomically more – it's astronomically more.

00:08:24.340 A top 1% man is much more desirable than a top 1% woman than an average woman is to an average man. 0.97

00:08:35.380 And so the question is, why?

00:08:38.200 Why is it that, like, if you're talking about, like, literally the most desirable male in the world today, they'd be astronomically more desirable than the most desirable female?

00:08:46.900 And it's for the same problem.

00:08:48.560 So if all women – because, you know, men broadly know this – are pairing with the top 20 or so percent of men and disproportionately with the ones at the very top of that 20%, the top 1, 2, 3%, that means that any guy who's at sort of the top of the desirability hierarchy is going to have a choice.

00:09:09.400 The women who are trying to date him are not just competing with women of their level of desirability.

00:09:16.840 They're competing with every – basically every woman in the world. 1.00

00:09:21.840 And what's worse from the perspective of that woman is these other women can augment their desirability to that male by altering aspects of the relationship contract that they are presenting that male with. 1.00

00:09:35.500 So when we've talked about this before, the example I've used is you might pay more for an apartment if that apartment allows you to have dogs in the apartment, right?

00:09:43.580 Because nothing has changed about the apartment itself, but it is more desirable to your average person on the market.

00:09:49.820 A woman coming to a man and saying, I don't mind if you sleep around, this can increase her desirability pretty dramatically to the man. 1.00

00:09:59.660 I think it's notable also because we've seen a lot of people's requirements for partners.

00:10:05.480 It's extremely rare for a woman to say that, like just period.

00:10:09.120 Yeah, yeah.

00:10:09.980 A woman who is, you know, top 10% can outcompete a top 1% woman with some of these guys just by saying that.

00:10:18.260 Yeah.

00:10:18.540 Or additional copyouts, like I will bring you other people to sleep with. 0.89

00:10:22.200 And this creates an environment where men who are in this top 1% of the dating market, and we have seen this within the communities that we're in, it is actually, I think, pretty rare in those communities for women to not allow them to sleep around. 0.79

00:10:38.720 And we're talking about within modern America, conservative male circles.

00:10:43.380 And I think that this really surprises people.

00:10:47.500 But here's another thing that people get wrong about this.

00:10:51.380 Okay?

00:10:52.020 So they hear this, and they say, yeah, but my perception has been historically, right, that when I see people do this polygynous thing, allow their partner to sleep around at any extent, or do the polyamory thing, it always leads to the death of the marriage, right?

00:11:10.600 Or the death of the relationship.

00:11:11.820 And this is really interesting, but I would unfortunately say this is the bad toupee phenomenon, because what you are actually noticing, where if you have friends, where they, so there's a few ways a relationship can be open, and a few ways a relationship can be closed.

00:11:31.260 So first, I need to be clear here.

00:11:33.840 We're specifically talking about polygyny and not poly.

00:11:36.460 Poly is pretty rare among these circles.

00:11:38.960 For a man to allow his wife to sleep with other people is actually incredibly rare for these exact same market phenomenon when you're talking within these circles.

00:11:48.860 Now, while most of these men are actually allowed to sleep around when you're talking about these ultra-wealthy men, the strength of their relationship is often outwardsly publicly visible by how much they actually choose to.

00:12:04.500 And this is the thing that people miss.

00:12:07.420 For example, if you look at our relationship, if you're asking the question, are we like poly or polygynous or whatever?

00:12:16.140 The answer is very interesting, because we are in so far as I do not have a rule saying I can't sleep with other people, whereas you have a rule saying you can't sleep with other people in our relationship contract.

00:12:33.640 However, if you're asking, are we polygynous in practice?

00:12:38.900 No, because you make a point of fulfilling all my needs.

00:12:44.060 And the contract point that says you are allowed to sleep with other people says you are allowed to sleep with other people after you have notified me this is the needs that aren't being met.

00:12:53.080 Can you meet these needs?

00:12:54.400 Well, I mean, as one person who's much older than us and much more old fashioned said to us at one point was like, well, if I can't have steak in the sheets, I'm going to get hamburger in the streets.

00:13:05.540 And like that, I don't know, sounded fairly accurate for I think how many husbands feel and I think how the arrangement often works is in many long term marriages, like after a while, a wife may become less interested in sex that happens often, you know, like she just isn't that interested in it.

00:13:24.180 And or one of the partners becomes less attractive, making it not as fun for the other partner to get intimate.

00:13:30.920 And that can go both ways, not just with wives, but with husbands, too, like sometimes husbands just become a lot less appealing.

00:13:36.520 So it's actually a really nice solution to just have that solution met outside the relationship.

00:13:42.140 Like it makes a lot of sense.

00:13:43.860 Yeah, well, and some women prefer that, but that does lower their ability to maintain a partner potentially if they're allowing him to source these things outside the relationship. 1.00

00:13:53.180 There is a risk.

00:13:53.760 But it could, but the really, the larger point that I'm making here is when people say, are you guys polygynous, they think what they're asking is, are you sleeping outside of your marriage?

00:14:09.020 The answer there is no.

00:14:11.560 But what they're asking is, are you allowed to sleep outside of your marriage?

00:14:16.460 Where the answer would be yes.

00:14:17.840 And that's a very interesting distinction where there are multiple ways a woman who is married to a very high value male can keep that male monogamous to them.

00:14:30.240 One way is to say, you are not allowed to sleep outside of our relationship.

00:14:36.440 The other way is to say, I will ensure that you have all of your needs fulfilled to a level where even with the Coolidge effect being in place, you will not have a desire to sleep with women outside the relationship.

00:14:51.840 Yeah.

00:14:52.220 And I think it's worth noting, too, that just because you have a rule against someone sleeping outside of a marriage doesn't mean they're not going to sleep outside of marriage.

00:15:04.740 And there's plenty of research showing rates of cheating in marriages over time.

00:15:09.420 And it happens.

00:15:11.060 And it also appears to happen when you look at Ayla's research on this, more than both male and female partners think it's happening.

00:15:17.840 So it's worse than we imagine.

00:15:19.840 So part of this also is, well, would you, I mean, I think a lot of people, and we see this also with genetic information, right?

00:15:25.180 Like a lot of people don't want to get genetically sequenced because they're like, well, if I have a higher risk of getting cancer, I don't want to know.

00:15:30.180 Which, you know, to us is like bizarre because obviously if you have a bigger risk of heart attacks or cancer or whatever, you should get screened for that. 0.99

00:15:38.120 You know, like you should know about it so you can prepare and reduce odds of that biting you in the ass. 0.94

00:15:42.660 However, I think many people have a sort of avoidant response to things like cheating or like health risks, and they would just rather not know. 0.98

00:15:50.200 So I think there's sort of this subtle in like forced monogamy marriages, this subtle undercurrent of, yeah, if you need to cheat on me, just do it and don't get caught.

00:16:00.460 Like I'd rather not know.

00:16:01.680 Whereas there's this other sort of mindset of, no, I mean, yeah, like we may not, I cannot promise that I'm always going to be super attracted to you or super attractive myself.

00:16:12.120 And if that happens, I'd rather have it happen in a way that doesn't kill our marriage or that doesn't hurt me or hurt you.

00:16:17.700 And so we just think it's personally, we think it's a better approach.

00:16:20.640 But I think it's also something that requires a huge level of emotional maturity and a huge level of mutual commitment to something bigger than just each other's feelings or one's own feelings.

00:16:31.440 Also, it's really helpful to have this in general, because if you do decide to sleep with someone outside our marriage, it is like a warning sign to me that, oh, maybe you're not totally happy.

00:16:41.160 Maybe, you know, we need to reevaluate or talk about, you know, how things are going.

00:16:46.200 Yeah.

00:16:46.340 And that's the point where I think the person is noticing here when they're like, I've seen people who are like aggressively poly or whatever, are sleeping around a lot outside their marriage.

00:16:58.000 That's a warning sign, regardless of what the rules are within your relationship, regardless of whether or not a person is allowed to sleep outside their marriage.

00:17:07.060 The fact that they feel the need to regularly is a sign that there is something systemic that they are not getting from their partner.

00:17:17.540 Now, for some individuals, they might be able to stably source that from another person.

00:17:23.400 However, I am not sure.

00:17:25.540 And I personally haven't seen proof that relationships like that are actually stable.

00:17:30.440 Polly people will pretend like it's a long-term solution. 1.00

00:17:33.180 Oh, he's not getting something from his partner.

00:17:35.680 Therefore, he's sourcing it from somebody else.

00:17:38.060 And this is a stable solution.

00:17:40.420 However, I don't.

00:17:41.540 Yeah, I don't know if I have ever seen that be really stable where the man actually felt the need to constantly get that from other people.

00:17:53.020 Where I've seen this be much more stable in relationships is the woman's look. 1.00

00:17:58.000 I'm not going to leave you or anything if you sleep around outside the relationship.

00:18:01.960 However, I prefer if you tell me and you try to let me solve these needs before you feel the need to go outside the relationship.

00:18:08.760 And the level to which this increases the stability of the relationship really can't be overstated.

00:18:14.320 Because one, the woman has much more information in terms of the guy's no longer satisfied with her. 0.92

00:18:19.940 She learns that at a lower threshold and begin to get a true measure of like how does she solve for that.

00:18:27.120 And two, the guy cannot end the marriage or it's much harder for the guy to end the marriage just because he wants sex.

00:18:36.260 Right? 0.98

00:18:36.700 Because with sex with other people. 0.96

00:18:38.960 Right?

00:18:39.440 And this is actually really important because a lot of people, when they're creating sort of the rules of their relationship, there is this implicit understanding that if one partner breaks the rules, then the relationship is over.

00:18:51.400 However, what is true a lot of the time.

00:18:53.960 Now, this is not true for men.

00:18:55.400 Generally, when a woman cheats, to most men, they would rather be outside of the relationship.

00:19:00.300 There was an interesting study that, or not a study, it was a Twitter poll that somebody did, where they're like, would you rather sleep with a hundred people other than your wife or allow your wife to sleep with one other person?

00:19:10.780 It was percent.

00:19:11.600 Like, no, I would rather she not sleep with one other person. 1.00

00:19:14.460 So, for guys, they're actually usually willing to, or fairly frequently willing to pull the trigger if the woman sleeps outside of their relationship.

00:19:21.500 And that is for biological reasons.

00:19:23.000 They're imprinted to be really worried about the paternity of the kid because historically speaking, what is this actually?

00:19:29.440 I want to look this up.

00:19:30.640 I can't find the study right now, but I seem to remember a study saying it was something like 25% of kids or 20% of kids.

00:19:36.020 So, it's really, really high, the number of kids born.

00:19:41.060 And that's a huge cost to a guy if that happens.

00:19:43.520 That's terrifying.

00:19:44.600 For women, the number of women who would actually end a high-valued relationship because their partner is sleeping with other women is generally pretty low unless it's like a point of pride thing or something like that.

00:19:59.140 And then this creates a really dangerous phenomenon because as soon as they catch the guy cheating, right, but there was this implicit understanding in the relationship they would leave him if he did that, but then they don't leave him.

00:20:12.180 Well, then that begins to break all of the other rules in the relationship because now all of a sudden none of the rules in the relationship matter.

00:20:19.940 Worse, there was a reason for this dishonesty.

00:20:22.160 And I think that that's another thing that this brings in, which is really valuable, which is there's a lack of a reason for me to be, what I have, I don't know.

00:20:31.480 With you sleeping with other men, it's an interesting question because I just, you wouldn't?

00:20:36.340 I wouldn't. 0.98

00:20:36.840 It's disgusting.

00:20:38.620 Yeah, like the idea, I mean, you've never slept with anyone before me.

00:20:41.600 Like, it's just not an issue that would come up.

00:20:45.180 Yeah, so it's not like there would be a desire there.

00:20:47.580 But I do feel that there is a level of truth where this is something I would never need to lie to you about, where you get that information and we are able to deal with it internally as a couple.

00:21:02.540 So I guess what we're saying here, and this is an interesting nuance that I think a lot of people don't get, is we do think it is a problem when somebody sleeps around a lot outside their marriage.

00:21:12.860 However, I also think that marriages that are built with a rule where the reason that the guy isn't sleeping around is because there is a rule against sleeping around instead of all of my needs are filled and we're perfectly honest with each other.

00:21:28.820 I think that actually the second type of marriage is probably going to be stronger in terms of within this current market context where there's like women throwing themselves at me all the time. 1.00

00:21:39.020 Yeah, I will add that I started out sort of insecure in a relationship because Malcolm actually is like quite desirable as a partner and gets hit on a lot.

00:21:50.140 And I do think that you have to have a pretty secure aligned marriage for something like this to work, especially when you're with a really desirable partner.

00:21:58.080 Now, I think if you have a relatively low value partner, it's, I think it's really easy to feel like, of course you can, because I mean, good luck, but the big risk is really for that small portion of the population.

00:22:08.640 Like you, Malcolm, and I think this really surprises a lot of people because they like love calling you a soy boy, but I don't think they realize a lot of women are super into whatever it is you're serving.

00:22:19.440 But yeah, like for that portion of the population, they're the ones who are going to be really interested in it because one, they can get away.

00:22:27.520 The demand is there. The opportunity is actually there, but you need a really secure and aligned marriage for that to work as well.

00:22:34.660 Because, you know, if this does happen and the wife isn't secure, it could cause just a lot of mental discomfort and suffering that isn't exactly ideal. 0.99

00:22:45.100 Well, this is actually a really important point. The fact that you know that you have allowed me to sleep with these women and I am choosing not to sleep with them, not because I'm not allowed to, but because I actually do not desire to, given what you're giving me, likely makes you feel much more confident about our relationship than you would if I was not sleeping with them because you had placed some rule against me sleeping with them.

00:23:12.840 Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I think it would be pretty crappy to be in a marriage where you know that your husband isn't sleeping with people because just 100% he's not allowed to. That's pretty bad. Yeah.

00:23:29.860 Yeah, yeah.

00:23:30.540 The impression I get isn't actually I mean, and I think that the key is a lot if the if the husband sleeping out of out of the marriage a lot, because I think when most people cheat, and I don't have the stats on this exactly, but this is the impression I get for most of the reading I've done about it.

00:23:44.760 It's not a lot. You know, it's, you know, someone meets a high school friend on a business trip, you know, like stuff happens. And I think it's really helpful to have that flexibility. I think where it's a problem, especially is where someone sleeping outside of the marriage quite regularly. Because usually when we've seen that happen, usually the person that the man is sleeping with is more or less interested in becoming the primary partner.

00:24:11.100 I think it's very unusual for a man to sleep with a woman outside of a relationship regularly for that person to not expect significant resources in return. And that undermines the marriage. So I think that's more like the big issue.

00:24:24.140 Right. But being open about this helps undermine that possibility.

00:24:30.160 It does. It does.

00:24:32.220 Because if so suppose I was to find a person who I was regularly sleeping with outside of the marriage, right? You would just be able to say I am no longer I'm not okay with that.

00:24:42.280 Yeah, yeah.

00:24:42.820 Even the way that this is structured. And that lowers any, any like hook that this person was getting. So because we were, we would be being honest in this situation, and I would be telling you that this was happening.

00:24:55.960 You would be able to much more reasonably than saying, I am not okay with you sleeping with any other women. Say I am not okay with you sleeping with that woman, because she's trying to disrupt the dynamics of our relationship. 1.00

00:25:09.680 Yeah, yeah. And there's always the risk, I think, both with that, like permission and without permission, that ultimately, like the connection between the guy and the woman that he's sleeping with outside of the marriage is going to be stronger than the marriage itself, and that the marriage falls apart. Like that's always a possibility.

00:25:26.480 But I don't, I think it's actually less, it's less possible or less likely when it's not cheating, when it's permitted within the marriage.

00:25:35.320 Well, and also because the woman would know that the spouse knows about this and has okayed it. So they know that through sleeping with you, because this is actually a really dangerous thing about this way of breaking up a marriage, is through sleeping with the husband, she is doing something that she also knows could destroy the marriage, could drive a wedge between him and his wife in a way that breaks up the marriage.

00:25:59.940 So she is getting a one-two punch in through this act, which would be a lot harder when you structure the relationship differently. 0.97

00:26:08.640 And I think another thing that's really telling here is a woman asking herself, which is just not done in many marriages these days, which is really sad, where you have these total monogamy rules, how do I ensure that my husband is fully satisfied?

00:26:28.080 And there is no pressure to ensure that, which is why I think you get many of these stereotypes, like women getting fat after they get married or women in other ways becoming undesirable.

00:26:40.100 So you think there's a problem of entitlement is really what you're saying here.

00:26:43.360 Yeah, like you don't feel that you are like, you work really hard to stay very desirable to me, because you know that if you did not, I would have other options.

00:26:58.100 But because you do, I would find the idea of going out and sourcing other women or allowing other women who hit on me to sleep with me, really personally disgusting.

00:27:07.920 As I've talked to you, the idea, because I have this emotional attachment to you, that you have worked to build through being an amazing wife, because you have engendered that, even though I'm allowed to, even though I regularly get very attractive women throwing themselves at me, turning them down is very, very easy for me.

00:27:29.660 And natural, not like I'm turning them down because I'm giving something up, I'm turning them down because the idea of strange is disgusting.

00:27:38.840 Well, no, it's interesting.

00:27:39.880 And it's something that I think is hard for somebody who's never been in a long-term loving relationship to understand as a male, is that male sexuality does sort of transform when you begin to see a partner as like your primary.

00:27:54.380 And you began to think of other women as like gross.

00:28:00.440 Well, and I find this interesting, because I mean, I think part of that's that you just like your life isn't built around hedonism.

00:28:07.160 So you're not exactly the best sample for like how a male is going to behave when given these types of rules.

00:28:12.440 However, people that we know who do sleep outside of their marriages a lot and have like insanely, maybe even like clinically unhealthy levels, like maybe like literal sex addictions, often are still very dedicated to their marriages and are often sleeping outside of their marriages because their wives like literally have no physical affection for them.

00:28:36.500 Well, I see this with older couples a lot.

00:28:39.100 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:28:40.100 And I just, but I think that there's something to be said there that even there is some, it's not just right to assume that a man is just going to want to take on infinite wives and not be very attached to them.

00:28:52.200 Even Louis XIV had really just one primary mistress at a time.

00:28:58.620 You know, it wasn't like he had five.

00:29:00.080 He didn't have a harem.

00:29:01.060 It's really more like he was a serial monogamous like person, but he had a couple dalliances here and there, but he was mostly dedicated to one woman after another.

00:29:10.720 And I think many men are like that.

00:29:11.820 They want to be romantically devoted to someone.

00:29:13.540 They want the connection.

00:29:15.120 So, yeah.

00:29:16.020 And I think that this is the difference between the way our society frames men.

00:29:20.540 Our society is based around young male sexuality. 0.99

00:29:24.820 Which is really the more the merrier.

00:29:26.100 Young men really would like to sleep often with five different women a week or something like that, right? 0.88

00:29:30.600 Like, but when you talk about the ideal sexual relationship for an older man or a middle-aged man, most of them are going to say, oh, yes, it's a single woman every day.

00:29:41.580 Like in movies, they treat this like it's some sort of horrifying thing.

00:29:46.660 Whereas I think if you ask most like mid-30s men, what is your ideal relationship?

00:29:51.880 Even if they are like a really sexually open person, it's got one partner who I really care for and who I, you know, do something with, you know, have kids, work with in some way and every day for the rest of my life.

00:30:04.360 And that's where I think our biology is also different from what many people anticipate, even when you have the Coolidge effect.

00:30:12.000 So the Coolidge effect, I referenced it before.

00:30:14.480 It's the idea that to a man, a new partner, like all other things being equal, will be more sexually interesting to him than an existing partner or a partner he slept with before.

00:30:26.720 Well, and to give the backstory, allegedly, this is apocryphal.

00:30:30.420 Calvin Coolidge, when president, toured some kind of chicken farm or something. 0.96

00:30:34.060 And it was mentioned to his wife as she was touring, I guess, a little bit ahead of him that like, oh, well, this one rooster will have sex with, you know, this, you know, like this many times a day. 0.54

00:30:44.200 And apparently she wasn't seeing a whole lot of action and she wasn't exactly thrilled about that. 0.95

00:30:47.920 And so she told that to Mr. Coolidge, you know, this rooster has, you know, sex this many times a day. 0.95

00:30:53.400 And he asked with the same chicken. 0.97

00:30:56.180 And that's, you know, the Coolidge effect.

00:30:58.360 His point being, obviously, that novelty is a huge portion of male sexuality.

00:31:02.000 And the research bears this out.

00:31:04.360 But I think what we're seeing here is, yes, it increases arousal, like pure sexual arousal.

00:31:11.300 However, it is very low in terms of what I would want my daily life to be like.

00:31:20.340 Yeah.

00:31:20.640 Yeah, things can arouse me and can arouse a man that are not things he actually wants to do in the real world,

00:31:28.340 because it would be inconvenient or gross or otherwise, you know, a waste of time.

00:31:35.980 So there's sort of four types of relationships, right?

00:31:38.480 One in which one of the partner is sleeping around and they are allowed to sleep around.

00:31:42.800 The other is the partner is sleeping around.

00:31:45.300 They aren't allowed to sleep around.

00:31:46.880 Another is the partner isn't sleeping around, but they are allowed to sleep around.

00:31:51.400 And then the final one is the partner isn't sleeping around and they aren't allowed to sleep around.

00:31:55.840 Right.

00:31:55.940 For me, sometimes when people talk about colligionary or polyamory, they're not really considering the situations in which the partner is allowed to sleep around,

00:32:05.600 but they're not sleeping around.

00:32:06.860 And they're also within the way the relationship is contextualized for both partners, not really supposed to sleep around versus,

00:32:14.440 and also the relationship type, you know, is a couple actually poly?

00:32:18.360 I guess you would say not if they're not allowed to sleep around, but they are sleeping around.

00:32:22.200 So I guess people would, if you wouldn't call a relationship in which somebody is cheating on their partner, but not allowed to.

00:32:28.900 Yeah.

00:32:29.200 I don't know.

00:32:29.740 It's interesting.

00:32:30.200 And if people are wondering why this has gotten so big in the big cities, the one point I'd really make is for the high valued men and women,

00:32:40.680 what you typically see happening is many women to one man, like many women are going after one man.

00:32:46.720 But when you're dealing with the lower value poly individuals, a lot of men, you know,

00:32:52.360 MGTOW or whatever men complain of, there's just no woman who wants to date an average guy. 0.99

00:32:56.420 And this is, this is true.

00:32:57.460 Like it's, it's very rare.

00:32:58.560 And monogamy used to solve this, but the way they're now solving it in these ultra progressive cities.

00:33:03.420 And I've seen this in like group houses and stuff like that, is that some dumpy kind of obese average woman will have five guys who she's dating. 1.00

00:33:12.820 Like one guy isn't good enough for her, but five guys.

00:33:15.500 Yeah, that's okay.

00:33:16.340 So what, what often really ends up happening in the quote unquote polyamory community is that you actually have a polygyny when, when you're dealing with the, the wealthy people, where it's one male, many females.

00:33:33.020 And then the, the opposite of that, I want to say, I forget what it's called.

00:33:37.160 One woman, many men. 0.67

00:33:38.780 Polygyny.

00:33:39.800 I don't know how.

00:33:40.380 Polygyny.

00:33:41.240 Yeah.

00:33:41.660 When you're dealing with the like middle income males, because often that's how a male's value is, is, is judged.

00:33:49.180 And then it's these women who are, I mean, that's what's, what's happening on OnlyFans and stuff like that to an extent. 0.50

00:33:54.880 I don't know.

00:33:55.520 Yeah.

00:33:56.040 Yeah.

00:33:56.420 I mean.

00:33:58.180 Yeah.

00:33:59.560 So there's a difference between the, the aspiration and what actually happens.

00:34:03.400 But anyway, Simone, I have loved talking with you about this.

00:34:06.460 And I do feel really blessed that you have created an environment where even though there's no rule against me going with other women, I have no desire to, just because you are such a great wife.

00:34:20.420 And, and so people would be like, oh, I haven't seen relationships where people say, yeah, relationships don't, but I, I, I just, I don't have any.

00:34:28.180 You, you, you give me too much credit.

00:34:29.900 I think literally you just had so many sexual partners before you got married.

00:34:33.280 You're like, I don't need this anymore.

00:34:35.780 I think you put yourself on a hard mode in the relationship.

00:34:39.740 Yeah.

00:34:40.440 Well, this is pretty much our, it's, it's our, it's our philosophy in general, right?

00:34:44.900 Like with the, the travel business that we run, like we really don't like getting contractual clients.

00:34:49.840 We like clients who work with us, not because we've signed some kind of contract and they have to be exclusive with us.

00:34:54.440 We want clients to work with us because we provided such a great service that they want to come back.

00:34:58.680 Like it sucks to work with someone who has to work with you.

00:35:01.980 And in general, I think our philosophy is against coercion and for free choice.

00:35:06.900 You know, that, that people should have the ability to choose the culture that works best for them, to choose the businesses that work best for them, to choose the nation or home or whatever that works best for them.

00:35:16.320 And I think that falls down to like our relationship philosophy as well, that partners should have the freedom to choose whatever sort of partner works best for them.

00:35:24.860 Now, I mean, I think the same goes for women and yes, so technically we have a rule where I can't sleep with anyone, but that's more because I really don't want to sleep with anyone. 0.97

00:35:32.280 Yeah, no, no, no. And I feel like if you really, I want you to tell me because it would mean that our relationship is over if I can't fix whatever was causing you to want to do that.

00:35:41.560 But also, you know, it's, we're perfectly in support of women sleeping outside of marriages too.

00:35:47.620 They just have to be aware of the costs that are associated with that.

00:35:50.240 Like everything like free market dynamics, you know, allow people to make choices and pay the price for making those choices.

00:35:55.360 That's fine.

00:35:57.440 Yeah.

00:35:57.980 Well, we shall see, right? You never know where we're going to be in 10 years.

00:36:01.080 So we've been together for 10 years at this point. I don't think something crazy is going to change.

00:36:06.700 Yeah. You know, I mean, there's 10 more kids like men tend to age better than women. Let's be honest about this.

00:36:13.320 Yeah. Well, so if I was, and this is where I think this really falls apart is if you were married to the types of cretin that I want a 24 year old woman over, you know, I don't know. 0.98

00:36:24.280 Part of me finds the idea of sleeping with much younger women, like really disgusting. 0.95

00:36:28.880 I, I've, I've, I've, and Simone knows this, you know, I've had a lot of younger women who have worked around us hit on me. 1.00

00:36:38.600 Babysitters and the type.

00:36:39.780 Yeah. It's a little weird.

00:36:40.600 It's a little weird. And I just find it, I guess like visually I can be like, Oh, like I can look at a younger woman and be like, yes, younger women are more attractive than older women.

00:36:54.400 But like the actual idea of sleeping with them as an older man is, I don't know. It's repellent.

00:37:02.160 But you know, keep in mind, that's not the norm. So just, I do think it's the norm. I do think it's the norm. And I think some of the guys who are doing this are really outside the norm, because I think, you know, when you look at the relationships, we know like these ultra wealthy men, I actually don't see them sleeping with that many younger women.

00:37:18.000 Unless they're in like weird relationships where they're like actually cheating on their partner. When the wife knows it's typically not somebody dramatically younger.

00:37:27.740 Would you say that's true or not?

00:37:30.680 I think it really depends. I think there's a lot of variation. So it's, you know, it's hard to say. And I wouldn't say that you're, you're normative. I mean, it's very unusual for a man to have the high partner count that you've had.

00:37:41.480 I think it's very unusual for a man to find, you know, like 20 something women to be more attractive.

00:37:48.640 Well, no, I can see them more physically attractive. But I think there's, there's, yeah, I guess this is my thing about status, right?

00:37:56.740 Where I guess I'd find a lower, like sleeping with a lower status woman really repellent the idea. 1.00

00:38:03.320 Yeah, yeah. I mean, everyone's different. But yeah, I do think that this is the kind of discussion that's not being had out loud a lot.

00:38:10.900 I'm glad we're talking about it. I'm curious to see, like in the comments, if other people have, have given this a try.

00:38:17.440 I mean, I think it's pretty unusual. I mean, the thing is, I think it's super common, but not, not where people talk about it, I guess.

00:38:25.020 So yeah, I'm curious to see what people say.

00:38:27.000 But what would you call it if you were going to come up with a name for it?

00:38:31.180 Dread game monogamy. 0.89

00:38:33.100 Dread game monogamy?

00:38:34.400 Yeah, I mean, the red pill uses, or at least used, like back when I read a bunch of it, they'd be like, yeah, the dread game is where you, you as a man, if you're spinning plates, like if the woman knows that she has competition, that's the dread game.

00:38:47.500 But it's also considered an incentive.

00:38:49.460 The female partner is going to be incentivized to be a good female partner because she knows that she has no exclusive contract, essentially. 1.00

00:38:56.960 Well, I'm glad we had this conversation. It's always fun. I like really look forward to these now. It's like my unwinding time.

00:39:04.440 No, it is really fun. What do you call it? Like weird base conversations about things.

00:39:11.540 Yeah, that's the point of this podcast.

00:39:13.460 Just meaning that the ideas that no one's allowed to have. We are okay with polyamory, but it's also bad to sleep with someone who's not your primary partner.

00:39:24.140 So there you go.

00:39:25.020 Everyone was that statement.

00:39:26.640 Yeah, yeah. And now everyone hates us. But you know what? I love you, Malcolm.

00:39:30.320 I love you too, Malcolm.

Based Camp - August 23, 2023

Are We Monogamous？

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