Are gun owners mentally ill?
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
For anyone who claims that this is a long-term viable model for homosexual men.
ReplyDeleteAre you willing to bet a significant amount (say $10,000) of money that the couple in that post will still be married and together in 20 years?
DR, are you willing to take odds? curious about your confidence in this proposition.
ReplyDeleteA homosexual with an unusually low sex drive? Perhaps he just doesn't care much about all the sex that he's missing out on. Homo- bordering on a-.
ReplyDeleteIHTG, he's not missing out on sex. He's having sex regularly -- just with a partner who doesn't turn him on. Many normal men are in the same situation: married to a woman who keeps getting older, when their true "orientation" is towards young hotties. Many of them manage to stay married anyway.
ReplyDelete@Razib,
ReplyDeleteEssentially the way I think about this is that given enough time (T -> Infinity) that the probability of divorce goes to 1. A gay man married to a straight woman will divorce her given enough time (but it's a censored observation because of finite human life expectancies), I'm sure of this.
So I think about the survival of their marriage like an exponential distribution. For every year they're together there's a constant probability of divorce, which is pretty much just the probability that he starts going out and having lots of enjoyable gay sex.
So it's only a question of what the decay lambda is on the exponential function. For a newly married gay man to a straight woman this value is very high. However given that this man has been married for 10 years I have to update my priors on lambda.
Overall on a 20 year horizon I'd give 70% odds that he they are divorced.
@ Wm Jas
Difference is that the vast majority of men can't easily go out and have no string attached sex with a hottie. Pretty much any man can easily find a gay bar in any mid-size city, and attract a reasonably attractive gay partner for anonymous one night stand sex (or multiple partners in one night).
Difference is men are naturally promiscuous, but no 8+ woman is going to sleep with a 50+ year old balding fat insurance salesman who she just met at a bar. There might be hookers, but they're hard to find, legally, socially and health-wise dangerous and a good clean one is very expensive.
Pretty much any non-hideous gay man can easily have tons and tons of willing sexual partners. The very tiny minority of males who this is true for (not just rich men, since they can attractive mistresses, but not no strings attached sex), e.g. incredibly attractive men or famous men like athletes and musicians have astronomical divorce rates.
And if they don't get divorced they almost always have a smoking hot partner and/or an agreement with their spouse that no strings attached cheating is alright. At least until they reach an age where male sex drive diminishes significantly.
Furthermore while an aging, homely or out of shape woman may not be at peak attractiveness, she's still somewhat sexually satisfying. If you don't believe me look how men sexually unsuccessful men will sleep with very unattractive women. How often do you hear of a sexually unattractive heterosexual male turning to gay sex?
The annual probability of divorce tends to drop over time--at least for straight people. People who are educated, traditional, religious, and who have multiple children are less likely to divorce (once again, the data we have is for straight people).
ReplyDeleteIt's been 10 years already, and his sex drive will decline as he gets older. A straight man might feel an increasing desire to cheat as he gets older because his partner is also getting older and less desirable, but he was never sexually attracted to his partner in the first place, so this isn't a factor. I think if they've already made it 10 years their chances of continuing another 20 are very good.
ReplyDeleteAs homosexuality becomes more widely accepted, religious subcultures will become the last reservoirs of whatever gay genes exist. There are surrogates for the out-and-proud, but that's always more expensive than knocking up a willing beard. (And having lots of kids to allay suspicion about your preferences.) I expect that in a handful of generations most gays will have come from religious families. This may, in fact, already be happening.
ReplyDeleteMost divorces are also initiated by women, to the extent that factors into our prediction of the probability of divorce.
ReplyDeleteI've heard a few accounts recently of Mormons from elsewhere visiting Utah and finding that, uhm, the men seem really gay there.
Catholic priests manage to remain celibate, most of them. I hope. That may have a bearing here in the divorce question, since the therapist is living something that is in the same ballpark as celibacy, though with domesticity.
ReplyDeleteI'm not familiar with the actual stats, but the narratives of gay men divorcing their wives are usually men who discovered they were gay (reportedly) or who were 'living a lie,' e.g., their spouse and community didn't know. This family doesn't fit either of those narratives, which may given them extra resources.
Pretty much any non-hideous gay man can easily have tons and tons of willing sexual partners.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure this is true. I think over-50 gays have a hard time finding partners. The lonely old queen is a stereotype for a reason.
Let's not forget that, according to the GSS, a minority of gay men are promiscuous.
ReplyDelete"I've heard a few accounts recently of Mormons from elsewhere visiting Utah and finding that, uhm, the men seem really gay there."
ReplyDeleteI have noticed as well that many Mormon men seem to have embraced a very beta role. Describing them as domineering patriarchs, similar to Muslim men, does not ring true at all
Overall on a 20 year horizon I'd give 70% odds that he they are divorced.
ReplyDeletecool. curious why you would put down $10,000. that's seems a lot of money if you think there's a 30% chance of you being out that money (correcting for inflation). but it might not be a lot of money to lose for you :-)
I'm pretty sure the operative term here is BISEXUAL.
ReplyDeleteActually this IS a long-term viable model. Modern marriage is an ABERRATION. It's all about pleasure, sex, erotic love and FEEELINGS. It's been diluted by feminism.
ReplyDeleteFor the love of goodness... did you know that marriage in the past was about any of the following:
- Friendship
- Status/Power
- Money
- God's will
- Arrangement
- Sexual chastity
- Children (reproduction)
How is this marriage any different?