Dating Roundup #12: Sex and Violence

No more burying the sex stuff under an avalanche of other stuff so no one notices. Use the break while we have one. Let’s go.

You’re Single Because You Suck At Kissing

Luckily this is first one is fixable and Critter is here to help. I find the advice here highly plausible. Like many skills, there are a lot of subtle skills, but a handful of basic principles matter a lot, especially paying attention and responding to what you’re getting back. Critter’s theory is that a basic kiss is a bell curve of intensity, done at a slight angle. First kiss style is elongated with less pressure. French kissing is trickier and less structured, see the thread, and the big mistake is to try to force it.

It’s not that simple, but like most things, there are some basic mistakes to avoid and first principles, then if you are genuinely paying attention and engaged you’ll be fine, and improve with practice. Seek deliberate practice and clear feedback, iterate.

I get the same sense with dancing. Yes, you need specific knowledge and practice, but if you use your human racial bonuses the remaining ‘cognitive core’ from which it all follows is relatively small.

You’re Not Single But You’re Sexually Incompatible

Lizzy: Y’all obviously can’t handle this, but for me, it’s best to find out if you’re sexually compatible with someone right away. Can you imagine falling in love with someone, waiting to sleep with them and then finding out they’re terrible in bed? Couldn’t be me. 💅🏼

Aella: Lots of my married clients were in this category. The less sexually compatible you are the less likely monogamy is gonna work out for you long term.

Sexual compatibility is obviously a huge deal. There is only so much you can figure out without putting it to the obvious test. Also whether or not one can make the test occur is itself a test.

There are also advantages to waiting. Many things require tests.

I think the core principle here is that the clock is ticking and you need to put as many things to the test as quickly as possible.

At the latest, when you reach the point at which you’re going to make a serious investment in other ways, you should presumably either put it to the test if you haven’t already, or be mutually willing to burn it all down later if it goes sufficiently badly.

The third option is to risk it going maximally madly and stick with it. Don’t do that.

That doesn’t mean that if things change later on and you become incompatible that you should automatically bail, especially with kids involved. It does mean, for almost all of us, that you can and should avoid getting into that mess in the first place.

You’re Single Because You Aren’t Into BDSM

Aella lays out her evidence that we should consider orientation to BDSM on the level that we consider sexual orientation, as a second independent dimension, with submission, dominance or both being a key part of a large number of people’s sexualities, especially female submissives, often such that they can’t get turned on if things remain sufficiently gentle, on a scale from bdsmexual to tendersexual. She reports that this distribution is largely bimodal, either you’re it or you’re not.

I doubt that is the optimal way to map the territory, but I think this is a better map than treating BDSM preferences as a minor weirdness. Know thyself, and seek and match accordingly. If you’re lucky enough that you can be into it without needing it, especially as a dominant, or even more so if you are less lucky and do need it from either side, then I highly recommend skilling up. This will put you in high demand.

I strongly believe Aella’s result below. People who would in theory be into BDSM have worse mental health (and, let’s be honest, tend to be smarter and also more interesting and fun and better friends) than those that wouldn’t be.

I also believe the other result, which is that actually getting to successfully put those desires into practice improves your self-reported mental health enough to overcome this, being in the scene improves mental health outcomes, and being a dominant is especially good for this.

The caveat is that one must worry about various complicated selection effects.

Justin Lehmiller: New study suggests that individuals who practice BDSM tend to have healthier psychological profiles on average than non-practitioners, exhibiting more secure attachment styles, lower rejection sensitivity, and higher levels of well-being.

Eric Dolan: Overall, the results strongly supported the original 2013 findings. BDSM practitioners were more likely than non-practitioners to report secure attachment styles, particularly among those who identified as dominants. These individuals also had higher scores on conscientiousness and openness to experience, and lower scores on neuroticism and rejection sensitivity—traits often linked to emotional stability and interpersonal effectiveness.

…

While the differences were not uniform across all roles, dominants consistently showed the most functional psychological profiles. They reported higher extraversion and well-being, and lower neuroticism and rejection sensitivity, especially among women. Submissives and switches generally fell in between dominants and non-practitioners on most measures.

Notably, BDSM practitioners also reported higher levels of well-being, with dominants again standing out as the most satisfied group.

…

Importantly, the researchers emphasized that their findings contradict the outdated notion that BDSM is a sign of psychological damage or deviance.

While BDSM has historically been pathologized—often viewed as the result of childhood trauma or emotional dysfunction—the data did not support this view. Instead, BDSM appears to be a variation of healthy sexual expression, often associated with traits that promote personal and relational well-being.

Aella: Uh while i love bdsm, people who report being aroused by it definitely have overall worse mental health outcomes in my sample of ~800,000 people

Cate Hall: yes but is your participant pool unbiased like this one? “the researchers recruited 1,884 Spanish adults through social media, online networks, and a sex toy retailer’s newsletter. About 60% of participants identified as BDSM practitioners, while the remaining 40% did not.”

Justin Lehmiller: I’m not sure how you asked about this in your surveys--but when I study BDSM fantasies, I find small but statistically significant links to lower mental well-being. However, in studies of folks who are very much in the BDSM scene, it’s the opposite...

Aella: My first thought would be to compare people in the BDSM scene to other people who are actively involved in some other non-sexual scene? A lot seems confounded by ‘the kind of person to be social and have community’

n0rthleft: Very much this. Anyone “in community” of any sort will have better mental health - whether pickleball or rope dojo - than the general population.

Actively being into BDSM and putting this into practice, especially as a dominant or switch, is a cheat code. It gives you community. It gives you connection. If you actually put in the effort and treat people well it puts you in demand. It gives a context where people can actually ask for and get what they want, including you. It makes more interesting. Almost any fetish is a gift, but especially this one.

The worry is selection effects, as Aella notes. Being successful within the scene especially as a dominant requires a lot of work and also that you exhibit many positive features that are being measured above, in addition to other unique features. You need to be successful at being social and having a community, which says a lot, and this is a relatively challenging one.

You’re Single Because You Didn’t Do The Work

You think actually having good sexual experiences just happens?

You think Dionysian spirit just spontaneously happens?

You don’t get to do great improv by not preparing.

Oh, no. You need to do the work. That includes physical and emotional work on yourself, learning and practicing your skills, doing the research, seeking out and getting to know the people, figuring out how to win them over, being someone worth sharing and likely also capable of funding the operation and beyond. There is much groundwork, of various kinds, to be laid.

It also involves someone, even if that someone is not you, doing the actual logistics.

It takes a ton of work in order to be spontaneous. If you want to spontaneously engage in something epic and awesome? If you want it to be kinky? That’s even more work.

Your preferences and goals are different from hers, but Aella is just correct here.

Glass Delusions: There is no hint of Dionysian spirit, pleasure or sensuality in Aella’s sexual escapades and that’s what makes it so unsettling.

Aella: tbh i think I’m just being transparent about what it takes to put on a good show.

to properly run an incredible sexual fantasy takes a ton of background skill and prep work. You need to be able to handle STI risk, which requires readign a bunch of boring papers. You have to process other people, which requires background checks. You have to be good at basic party design, which requires a very ‘cold’ view into incentives - if you put the furniture here, where do people congregate?

You have to test messaging - what kind of opening phrasing sets up what kind of expectations for people? What kind of food selection is best? How do you communicate rules effectively?

And if you want to be truly good, like reach apex levels of hedonism, you need to deeply understand sexuality. Tracking sexual trends, learning stats, doing experiments - all of this helps develop more robust models of human sexual psychology that you can use to help fine-tune the choices you make when building sexual fantasies.

Really, from my perspective, your spontaneous natural little sexcursions are cute and amateur. Y’all are like ‘oh we had sexual tension and then banged in the back seat of a car’ like this is the peak sexual heights a human can reach.

I think this is perfectly wonderful if that’s what you like, but in the spectrum of possibility you are stuck in child’s play. You have never properly Tried to achieve any sexual greatness. Yall are held back by the shallow narrative that ‘trying is unsexy’

No, I think through a structure of cold analysis and unsexy practice, I have helped create some of the greatest sexual fantasy events currently running on earth (for people with this class of fetish).

I just am open and honest about the process it takes to get there. I want other people to be able to build similar things, and so I show you the scaffolding, the cold lights, the processes behind the magic show. But it’s a bit silly to not even attend my show, and then point to my writings about my process and go ‘wow, she has a payroll, and a storage area, and feedback tracking? She must be terrible at this, that doesn’t sound magical at all.’

It requires being a PM to be able to then indulge in next-level dionysian spirit! They are different, but one is a necessary step, and it’s a mistake to think that hedonistic sexual revelry is undone by the fact you have to do logistics about it beforehand

have you attended one of my orgies?
i have been v disappointed with most other orgies i’ve been to. it’s why i decided to start throwing my own

it’s 100% fine to be a sex amateur. but it is patently true that like, almost every single person on earth is not attempting to take sex to crazy new heights. most ppl just have nice sex with their spouse or whatever. the range of sex toys u can buy is so narrow.

China Blue: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it but I agree with her that you seem to give off a lack of Dionysian spirit. Your relationship to food is an example of it. Sex is another. It seems like an intellectual pursuit you’re passionate about, not sensory pleasure and abandon.

Aella: that’s cause i’m not having sex with you! I’m writing about analytical topics around sex! When I actually have sex it’s extremely about sensory pleasure and abandon. Idk why people think ‘writing about a subject online’ means you somehow cannot have full flow state when practicing it.

Damon Sasi: It’s 2025 and we’re still out here having to explain to people that yes, you can improve things by putting time and effort and intellectual analysis into them, even implicit and vibey-things.

“Heh. Can your SCIENCE explain how to make richer, more fulfilling hedonic experience?”

Leo Guinan: This is what getting great at anything looks like btw.

Charlotte Lee: I have no choice but to respect this level of effort and commitment

I respect it, but would not personally have any amount of fun with sex if I always treated it like that

Aella: Unfortunately sex has that baked in in the sense that women are choosy about their sex partners. To be able to relive women of this you have to take on the burden yourself in various ways, and this is a v unsexy process. I’m happy to do that for them.

i think this might be a function of men drastically misunderstanding female sexual psychology? You don’t *see* the planning, or even parse it as laying groundwork. but so much of what it takes for women to feel sexually free is to have an environment where they can trust the person they’re with, and where they feel sexy and desireable, and that doesn’t just like, spawn into existence like a boltzmann brain.

What do you get at the end?

Aella: the cnc🌶️ events i run are themed, and i like making posters for them. Here’s some:

If you’re reading this, you have a clear preference order.

The limiting factor is finding experienced dudes who are genuinely into full-blown consensual non-consent, which is rare.

You can also watch Aella give a 20 minute talk on this, from Hereticon. The alternative, what happens in other less logistically researched orgies, is that the average number of sex partners is less than 1 and most of those cases are existing sexual partners who came to the orgy together. That can still be fun, you get to be sexy and naked with other people and watch or be watched, but that’s presumably not what most people would most want out of the experience.

It didn’t take me long to find the Tweet that shows Glass kind of knows it too:

Glass Delusions: When I get married it’s gonna be me and my spouse and the officiant and we’re all gonna hike up to the tallest mountain peak in New Mexico and the officiant will declare us married at 13,000 feet.

That requires a ton of logistics and practice and work to pull off safely and romantically, is nothing like what most people want from their wedding, and I bet for the right person it’s a pretty awesome way to do it.

My only note is that yes, I have tried to achieve sexual greatness, yes it involved a lot of research and practice, yes I claim it worked in its own way, and no I will be offering no further details at this time.

You’re Single Because Being a Dominant Is Too Much Work

Here are two additional important facts about BDSM, especially being a dominant.

1. A large percentage of people find the fun part to be a lot of fun.

2. A large percentage of people find getting to the fun part to be a lot of unfun work.

There is also a large percentage of people who do not find it fun and don’t want to do it, or would only do it to help out someone else, and a lucky few who find it all fun.

Not only is there no contradiction here, it is a common pattern. There are so many things out there that are or sound like quite a lot of fun, or that would be a lot of fun for someone else, that I would love to do, but that I do not do because doing so sounds like and is a lot of work, or is expensive, or time consuming.

Most supposedly fun things I’ll never do again (whether or not I’ve done them before) aren’t sexual at all. The most fittingly hilarious example of this is literally the ‘dungeon master’ of D&D, which if you did all your work and have a good group is great fun while you’re doing it but really is a lot of work.

This applies both to the dominant in the full BDSM sense, and also in the more general life sense, and even to some extent in the ‘constantly take initiative and do whatever you want to them in the moment’ sense.

Cartoons Hate Her: I’m not making a judgment either way, but I read the reddit BDSM sub for an article a while back and it was surprising how many women were begging their boyfriends/husbands to be doms and the men were just very not into it.

One guy was so turned off that he developed ED and had to take viagra. Another guy said he would prefer she do it with *someone else* so she has like, a separate dom for that. That last guy might have a cuck fetish.

Aella: Extremely reflected in my data yes. This is the biggest non-rare gap in sexual preferences between the genders by far.

Jon Kung: Tops are disappearing because the people are tied, overworked and just want to lie down. Increase minimum wage and paid time off and the tops will return. This is science.

This wasn’t supposed to do well. This isn’t what I want to be remembered for.

Sam: “My gf wants me to beat her up and choke her, I wasn’t expecting it and I’m not into it at all” is a sentiment I’ve heard a lot from male friends/acquaintances

Aella: this is common knowledge in kink communities. you see fetlife posts like ‘man it’s so hard to find doms’ and ‘everybody is a sub’.

In my data there’s roughly a 1.5 ratio of subs to doms in *both* gendered directions! Trying to figure out the reason is a big part of my research.

Doms don’t think like this tho. Real doms are like “i can’t believe ppl want me to just do whatever I want to them, clearly being dom is the better end of the deal”

Zac Hill: I discovered I was “dom” by having like N=X people say something like ‘it felt like you were just doing whatever you wanted to/with my body; I like that, do more of that’ and me being like ‘…wait this is a thing?’

Misha: I’ve had this exact same experience but I’ve also had the experience of doing what I want and the other person not liking it and wanting me to do something else.

Aella: Ya not all doms are compatible with all subs. There’s a wide spread!

Mylan Giberson: I had this experience as a young man. My main hangup is that being a Dom is SO MUCH WORK! You have to 100% attuned 100% of the time. Being a regular boyfriend already involves all kinds of planning, decision making, and feminine signal interpretation. Being a dom multiplies it by a million.

Gorky Rojas: To “sub” sounds like passively letting the other person do the work for your benefit. To “dom” sounds like signing up to do extra work for a more passive partner.

Nothing wrong with doing work for your partner, but in this framing the asymmetry doesn’t seem surprising to me.

Aella: This isn’t how real doms think about this! From domland, being a dom is great, you get to do whatever* you want, it’s about your pleasure*. If we lived in a world with a surplus of doms we’d be explaining it away with “well ofc everyone wants to be selfish.”

Aspex Photo: “Real” doms. Lol. Well just let me allude to just how much time, effort, study and practice it takes to become a “real” dom. And that’s before the good fun stuff actually happens, that’s just prep. Then there is acquisition, organization, toy cleaning, maintenance, scene prep, scene planning, scene cleanup..... Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in any way knocking it. It HAS perks. But it certainly isn’t all about being selfish 24/7. Like everything in life, there are tradeoffs.

Aella: I’m referring to innate orientation here, not the procedures.

Ben Pielstick: I think this view, and even this practice are actually pretty common. A Dom has to set up a scene, make sure everything goes correctly, and provide aftercare, and basically all the sub has to do is show up. I think this is kind of a Dom’s fault though. subs can do more work.

Like everything else, there is a continuum of how into or not into being dominant or submissive any given person is, either in general or in a particular way. Also different people have different amounts of free time and energy and resources, and different alternative activities, along with the different preferences on the activities themselves, and thus willingness and ability to devote a bunch of work to this. And skill matters a lot at all points in the scale, which can be greatly improved with practice and training, especially the more involved things get.

Also, no, it isn’t in most cases ‘do whatever you want’ or only about your pleasure, even if you don’t directly care about their experience (and mostly people do care a lot), since you have to as it were keep the customers satisfied, although in some extreme cases doms really are in ‘as long as you don’t outright injure them’ mode.

Aella is no stranger to the ‘too much work’ complaint. I remember her once saying that her paramour was complaining that he was taking up too much time having sex with various women. Everyone, no matter how ‘real,’ has a limit.

If one is a sufficiently hardcore ‘real dominant,’ then yes, all of those tradeoffs will be very much worthwhile up to a large quantity of such activity, and you’ll be happy to do it. But the same as any other hobby or preference, most people who would like to do the thing are not as enthused as that, and are at a place in life where they cannot center their lives around the activity, or they have only a small number of non-work slots and this would take most of them.

Another issue is that you potentially open yourself up to misunderstandings, false allegations or worse, although for most well-meaning people the fear is a lot stronger than the actual risk level.

You’re Single And Would Rather Be Free Use

Free use (as in one party can do approximately whatever they want to the other at essentially any time unless you safeword) and other consensual non-consent dynamics are one of those things that, as I understand them, can work fantastically well if:

1. Everyone clicks, desires match up and there’s attraction and respect.

2. The dominant partner puts in actively more work to set things up than they would under the standard methods, ensure positive experiences and adapt.

3. Everyone is on the same page.

If all three are true, this can work for a much higher percentage of people than you might think. But if you try to do a half-ass job it will reliably blow up in your face.

Bleep Bloop (being wrong): Sex is how a female submits to her husband. A man’s pleasure during sex creates life. A woman’s pleasure during sex is biologically useless. When you marry a man you give your body to him. Not understanding this is why 50% of marriages fail, and men upgrade to happy horny nubiles.

Normie MacDonald: Wow that’s crazy imagine if you guys loved each other?

Cartoons Hate Her: Half of the guys who post this stuff just want a freeuse dynamic but aren’t dominant enough to deserve it or really know what to do with it

Chesed: All I can really say about duty sex discourse is that if my husband was like “you have to have sex with me. It’s your duty as my wife” it would turn me on immediately. And look I know I’m a sex weirdo but I think I’m not the only one.

Gains B: I suspect you are married to a man who is attractive and you respect deeply which isn’t the case for most women.

Chesed: Yeah that’s kind of my point.

Like other aspects BDSM demand for good dominants greatly exceeds supply. Becoming a good dominant is a, well, dominant strategy.

Aella reminds us that the men actually into full-on consensual non-consent do exceedingly well in settings that include safe spaces for it.

Aella: I throw simulated rape orgies and it is way easier to find women than men. Men want to come, sure, but if u filter them for “actually being aroused by cnc” then it’s pretty hard to find.
Whereas like every fifth woman I mention it to goes “omg that’s extremely hot I wanna come”

Our orgies have a lot of well meaning, trustworthy men who aren’t that into cnc but can kinda get into an adjacent thing and are trying to just pretend in order to make the ladies happy

The few men who are actually genuinely into it get SO laid in these communities. If a guys penis gets hard from a girl struggling and crying all the girls tell each other and then they all go try to fuck that guy

You’re Single Because You Wouldn’t or Did Choke Her

It turns out the study in question is quite bad, and its results worthless, but very obviously actually choking someone (as opposed to the playing that you might do it and putting your hands where you could do it but not actually doing more than a tiny bit of it) is not a safe activity and most of the time not worth the risks involved.

Bryan Johnson: Don’t choke your partner during sex.

A study tested 32 college-aged women: half had been choked during sex 4+ times in the past month, the other half hadn’t.

Women who were frequently choked had significantly higher levels of S100B (brain injury marker, p = .002). This marker is often elevated in people with concussion, brain swelling, or blood-brain barrier damage. Here, it’s elevated after repeated sexual strangulation.

Amanda Askell: Of all the sexual kinks that could have gone mainstream, it sucks that society skipped over the weird-but-benign ones and went straight for the can-permanently-harm-or-kill-you ones.

Eliezer Yudkowsky: I respectfully register that society has done an okay job on latex, thighhighs, spanking, fur-lined handcuffs, and a number of other fetishes at least as popular as choking and much less deadly. Unless those all count as benign, but not weird?

Amanda Askell: Those definitely count as benign and not too weird. I’m curious about how popular both are, especially among the youths. Need @Aella_Girl to bring us the answers.

You’re Single Because You Have Very Particular Preferences

Of course consider the source of the sample but this broke way more evenly than I expected.

Aella: I am aroused by novelty, but once that wears off in longer relationships I basically never initiate sex. I hate initiating sex. I prefer a man just have sex with me whenever he wants, no matter my reaction. Some guys love this arrangement but those guys are rare.

Cavi: What’s the main issue here: your frustration that they never initiate sex, or their frustration that you don’t?”

Aella: Well often they initiate but stop if I seem grouchy or like I don’t want it. This is also a problem! Or it used to be. Now I’m extremely upfront about not initiating sex and I haven’t dated a guy who needs me to initiate sex in many years.

Or is it rare after all?

Aella: What’s your gender? || Would you find it erotic to have a relationship arrangement where the woman almost never initiates sex, but the man can have sex with her any time no matter her reaction (even if she’s grouchy or says the word “no”)?

(Assume there’s safeword and consent)

Nord: wtf lol

Well, yeah, it’s rare because ‘hot’ and especially ‘hot in theory’ are very different from ‘wants it in practice’ especially on a regular basis.

But if there was sufficiently robust common knowledge that this is actually desired and found hot, which is not easy to establish, then it probably is not all that rare.

You’re Single Because of Polygyny

A new paper claims ‘High rates of polygyny do not lock large proportions of men out of the marriage market,’ citing census data from 30 countries and the historical United States to show that high-polygyny populations don’t disadvantage men in marriage markets. What they actually show is that historically polygyny wasn’t correlated with lower marriage rates, but there are obvious common cause explanations for this, and the math still be math.

Very obviously if you take a given community and then allow men to have multiple wives, it is going to skew the market against marginal men, even if that tends to happen in places that are otherwise skewed the other way.

But maybe? The alternative story is that non-monogamy makes competing for the most desired matches much less rewarding, which in turn means that de facto it pushes towards ‘less ambitious’ matches based on synergy and away from holding out.

You’re Single Because Polyamory Isn’t Right For You

Simone and Malcolm Collins stand in defense (hourlong video) of Aella and the option of slutty polyamory, based partly on her post Anecdotes From The Slutcloud which is fun and exactly what it sounds like. As they point out, Aella is very clear about what is involved in choosing to go into this form of polyamory, and that it is something from which most people should run away screaming once they understand what is involved and where it leads.

By her own account, only a small portion of people should choose this path. It does seem to make the exact right people, who vibe with it and have a lot of time to invest in such activities, happy, and yes their long term relationships can work out.

It’s not for everyone, or the timid, or those without copious free time.

But then again:

Aella: Currently thinking the greatest thing standing in the way of men and access to insane sexual surplus is their own experience of sexual jealousy.

U can’t have a sustainable community where a man has sex with dozens of beautiful women, if that sex means stealing the women away from other men.

Ppl call my bf a cuckold, which is technically true. I look over and he’s lying on a couch with a cute naked girl on each arm.

The next morning I get coffee and he’s in the other room banging a third girl. Now afternoon, he’s preparing to go fuck yet another girl. He complains fucking women is becoming a full time job, he’s in too high demand, “I’m spread thin”, he says.

Cuck? I mean I guess so. I think he’s grateful when I get laid with someone else, it gives his penis a little breathing room.

Yeah, I mean that sounds nice if you have the bandwidth for it, but I really don’t think that jealousy is the main thing stopping this from happening for most people? Nor do I think the jealousy would be that big a deal if typical people got that level of success.

Richard Ngo: Polyamory is like free trade.

Your relationship can acquire more (emotional) goods and services by importing them.

But if key domestic industries are outcompeted you’ll lose the productive capacity required to ward off hostile rivals.

I might instead refer to Coase’s Theory of the Firm and mention something about aligned incentives, the value of certainty and reduced transaction costs?

Alternatively, think about it as wanting the ability to lose some aspects of productive capability and instead engage in trade, without worrying that the productive capability is going to be required to ward off hostile rivals.

Aella notes that poly dating is like other dating, in at least this one sense:

Hunter Ash: I’ve seen a lot of couples open their marriages. What happens pretty much 100% of the time is the woman gets all the dates she wants and the guy gets hardly any. Far fewer women than men are okay being a side piece. And if he couldn’t even seduce his wife, he probably has no game.

Aella: In my data of many thousands, men and women who identify as poly have about the same number of partners (women have slightly more but the gap isn’t huge). If you open a relationship based on one person’s dissatisfaction it’s true that person will prob end up with more dates

The difficulty in dating for men and women is the same monog or poly. women can date easily, but generally are dissatisfied with the dates they can get. men date less easily, but are more satisfied with the dates they do get.

You’re Single And Call It Solo Polyamory

I’m a very open minded person and you do you, but I flat out do not grok ‘married solo polyamory.’

Ashley Ray: Like sure i can say i’m single but you might wonder why i have a partner who i do take some steps on the relationship escalator with and that’s where the solo poly part comes in.

You can be solo poly and married. i am so sorry we’re annoying.

Cartoons Hate Her: You know what, I don’t understand any of this but she’s cool so it’s fine. Let people be solo poly married idk

Ashley Ray: so you know how poly people can be married? and some of them do it rank style? (my husband is my primary, a new partner is secondary) well a married solo poly person does not do that. it is a v simple thing you only need to understand if you’re dating one.

Carlos That Notices Things:

Romy: i have a poly friend who has multiple married ppl in her community who are doing this and it’s a nightmare. one woman has cancer and friends had to take her to the ER bc her husband was on a date with another partner and they are non-hierarchical so the wife didn’t come first. wife claimed she supported this choice, but was suffering a lot.

i’d argue that in any poly configuration a partner in the hospital beats a random date with another partner, regardless of who’s the spouse. the problem is that a lot of ppl attempting something this ideological and counterintuitive do impractical and hurtful things in the name of that ideology.

apparently this needs to be said: poly ppl are not all bad or immoral. some members of a group doing something bad does not mean the group is inherently bad. some monogamous people do hurtful things within their relationships, and in those cases we blame the people not the relationship style.

Mason: I do not understand what a marriage is supposed to mean if it does not mean you take your cancer-stricken wife to the ER instead of going on a date with someone else.

I assume you think Romy is anti-poly and she is emphatically not.

As it turns out, you simply do not have to give cover for people who behave like sociopaths in order to defend whatever it is you have in common with them.

So three things to ask:

1. I get being polyamorous, but if you don’t put your spouse above other partners it seems to me like this is a very strange use of the concept of a spouse.

2. Even if you are ‘non-hierarchical’ this is no excuse for not being able to prioritize. Very obviously you cancel a date to take your other partner to the ER even if the two are equals, why is this an argument at all?

   1. Indeed, I think even if the hierarchy runs the wrong way, you cancel a date in this spot anyway, very obviously? I mean taking a platonic friend to the hospital trumps normal date with your wife, I’d presume.

3. If your system requires you to act okay with things that aren’t okay, how can that possibly turn out well?

To be clear, I don’t think Ashley is doing anything wrong or being annoying. It’s that none of it makes any sense to me and doesn’t seem like a thing that can actually exist the way it is described. It seems full of contradictions, the same way that whenever you work at a company that claims not to have a hierarchy what that actually means is that they refuse to make explicit or admit what the hierarchy is or any of the relevant rules, you have to figure it out for yourself.

You’re Single Because You Didn’t Go To Slutcon

From all reports Slutcon was an excellent product. That product is not for everyone, but there are few good opportunities to explicitly skill up on flirting and other sex and relationship things, so if you could use skilling up this seems clearly worth doing if it happens again, especially if it is local for you.

Aella outlines why she created Slutcon. In brief: Sex is good, she wants to have more of it and for others to as well, and there aren’t good sources of feedback so time for a bootcamp style approach complete with lots of feedback. By all accounts, mission accomplished.

Aella confirms that this writeup from Luke Winkie captured the spirit of the event.

Brooke has this writeup from her perspective.

Talia offers notes on flirting from Slutcon weekend.

Talia Grace Sable: Flirts structured as a compliment (”You’re beautiful”) were sweet but didn’t go anywhere. They placed me high-status relationally. I appreciated them and felt warmly, but the energy died there. There was no tension, no back-and-forth.

I wanted to have my interest piqued. I wanted it to be real interest, not something I pretended to have just to indulge men.

I had social permission to be rude this weekend. So I’d wait in conversation to see if they give me a reason to care or put in conversational effort.

Most men who approached me didn’t give me a reason to care, and were asking me to do hard work to bridge that gap of interest

Me: “Sorry, you seem boring. Are you boring?”

Man: “Well, you didn’t ask me any questions about myself!”

Me: “It sounded like work!”

Lines that felt scripted / pickup-y mildly impressed me in the “you’re brave” sense. They gave me a sense of the person as trying, bold, working on confidence, but not particularly socially skilled

Which is fine as a WIP.

Some of the worst interactions were with men who weren’t flirting, they were “having a conversation” and doing things like ranting without noticing if I’m interested or not or saying the most boring stuff I could imagine It felt indirect. I wish they had just flirted.

The more enjoyable flirts for me were things like figuring out something together, like “what’s going on with flirting?” Or things that made me feel like people were curious about me as a person, like “what’s it like to be flirted with so much.”

The best flirting I experienced was a few weeks back. A man lied to me, negged me, made jokes, and complimented me in a bewildering frenzy. I didn’t run away right away bc a woman was cozied up next to him. It was extremely entertaining and we’re friends now.

And here’s Lyra. Note both the similarities and differences, especially the contrast between the risk of not talking about yourself versus talking about yourself too much or bragging.

Lyra: what decreased my attraction:

- being disrespectful to other men (e.g. blocking other guys from interacting with me)

- compliments that put other women down

- talk too much about himself before I showed curiosity

- negative talk about self

- too quickly discouraged by rejection (many of my “no”s are “not yet”s)

- bragging. Most things men brag about don’t impress me

- negging. I never had to earn my parents’ love/approval so I won’t try to earn yours

- insincere over-the-top compliments

- inefficient mind games

what increased my attraction:

- vulnerability that’s self-aware, not needy

- direct demonstrations of interest and intention - holding my gaze

- intellectual sparring

- perseverance. I’m hard to flirt with bc I don’t flirt back until I’m attracted and I’m slow to build attraction

I love the qualification of ‘inefficient’ on mind games. Efficient mind games? Great. Inefficient mind games? No good. I concur.

- enthusiastic courting. I like people who like me

- specific, directed compliments that make me feel seen

- genuine curiosity. I want you to know me before being seduced by me

- high baseline happiness and gratitude

- slow to judge and excited to engage with unconventional ideas

While writing this I wondered if I’m just giving away the cheat code to seducing me, but I think these are hard to fake and I’m pretty good at detecting insincerity.

Yeah, I don’t think she needs to worry. These are the kind of ‘cheat codes’ you want everyone to have, because knowing about them doesn’t mean you can pull them off.

Sarabet Chang Yuye also writes up her experiences, and her eagerness to finally be in a place where she could provide honest feedback rather than doing the typical dancing around all feedback.

Dave also offers his takeaways.

Dave: slutcon ended over a week ago but i wanted to reflect more on my experience. much of the writing around the event focused on its mechanics: the talks, the “flirt girls”, the demographics of attendees, the cost, etc. all fine talking points but it’s missing the forest for the trees if you ask me..

when the event ended, I felt as though I’d received a gift. like the event was this elaborately staged alternate reality meant to convey something important but was never explicitly stated. the more you’d explore, the more it’d tug at you. simply put, the space communicated: “we love men”, “be authentic even if it’s cringe”, “it’s okay to fail”, “let’s have fun”.

these feels were there to normalize a relation that’s gone askew. the male/female dynamic is caught in an unhealthy arms race. men want something (sex, validation, etc.) and have developed sophisticated ways to conceal their intent, and women have developed ways just as sophisticated to suss out intent and protect themselves from overreach. we’ve over-indexed on offense/defense and it’s turned us into malformed creatures who cannot openly express our desires.

slutcon was staged de-escalation. men were asked to be honest about their intentions, own their potential rejection, and enjoy the process while letting go of the outcome. women were asked to meet that honesty with openness, be direct with their boundaries and engage generously. it was an experiment that put faith in us getting to a better place if we had more empathy.

the gift i felt at the end was feminine containment. the women were actively holding an emotional (and physical) space. in this space men could lean in to our charming selves because our fears were minimized. you feared rejection less because “we love men”, you feared embarrassment less because “be authentic, even if it’s cringe”, you feared inadequacy less because “it’s okay to fail”. the space was beautiful, clean, filled with curious objects and a zillion cubbyholes. groups would materialized and evaporate and materialize again in new forms with virtually no cliques. it all created a sense of ease where the men stopped acting and the women were relieved. we could all just be.

It’s tough to abstract that stuff away without actually being there, but you can hopefully get some fraction of it through abstraction?

You can also read the write up in the San Francisco Standard, describing the event as remarkably wholesome, and that several attendees praised as being highly accurate.

If you want to volunteer, present or flirt or attend Slutcon 2026, follow those links.

You’re Single So Let’s Marry Aella

She’s offering a bounty of $100k if you find her the right man, as far as I know this is still open.

Aella: If you recommend me a guy and I end up marrying him, I’ll pay you $100k.

I’m a very weird person. It hasn’t been hard to find people to date, or men willing to marry me, but ‘people I want to marry’ is a vanishingly small group.

I’d like a man who’s fully committed to polyamory (~3% of the population) with space for a primary partner, and with ominous sexuality (~10% of men), who’s in a similar enough wealth tier to me that I don’t have to financially support him, who wants kids, and who’s fully self accepting.

(Other things would be nice like similar intelligence levels, similar political values, similar ages, similar BMIs, but I’m already pushing my luck)

I notice that I feel excitement about dates mostly when the guy is high status in some field, so while I in theory am open to guys who aren’t high status, in practice I seem to not actually go on dates with them. I want to need to try to impress someone. It doesn’t feel sexy to go on a date where he automatically views me as a catch.

(I assume you already know enough relevant facts about me, but for additional logistics I’m 33 and live in the Bay Area)

Here is my date-me survey. Inside is a question asking ‘who referred you’.

You can also fill out the recommendation form, where you tell me directly about someone you think is good. You can do this in addition to getting your eligible bachelor to fill out the survey; your recommendation might cause me to look closer at his answers. You can also just do this even if he doesn’t fill out the survey at all.

If this is motivating to you, I’ve written more on what I’m attracted to at the end of this post.

Or, you can find someone to pay me 10m (post tax) to impregnate me and have me raise his child, sole custody, single mother. If you know someone who might be interested (and who I haven’t already talked with about this), ask them to email my assistant at sasha.c.whitt@gmail.com. If the deal goes through, I’ll pay you $300k.

She did this interview as well, which provides more context.