Why Are Young Men Choosing Celibacy?

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Well it's not your problem, sure, but people for whom there is a large discrepancy between the romantic and sexual experiences they want, and the romantic and sexual experiences they're having, can certainly have problems with this.

I'm also confused as to why there is a potential problem.




You aren't saying *I'm* a chronic pain are you?

I am waiting for mine to cut in.
Isn't it pretty much inevitable eventually if you live long enough?
That in itself is a depressing thought. <chuckle not so much>

Some people simply cannot accept the discrepancy between what they want and what they get. The rest of us see that discrepancy and either accept it or try to do something about it -- sometimes both.

Heaping blame, anger and scorn upon others for not giving me what I want makes no sense. Why do others do it? Do they believe that it will somehow make them more attractive? Do they think that they can can guilt-trip, intimidate, or shame someone into loving them? What is wrong with those people?

Celibacy is not the problem; it's the sh***y attitude of some celibate people that's the problem -- for them!

no, i was merely commenting on the state of being human in a body which wears out over time. and DON'T wait for your pain to "cut in" - head it off at the pass [by lifestyle improvements] before it has a chance to get the drop on you. i wish somebody had given me that advice before mine got the drop on me.

Well, I have never resolved the fact that I didn't have Claudia Schiffer as a partner. <gnashing of teeth>

being that when they made me, they broke the mold, i can't expect to find another compatible sort also sourced from a broken mold.

For the record, I've never been one to assign blame to others for my struggles with romance. I acknowledge that people like that exist, and in my opinion the reason they do that is so they don't have to look inward and change things about themselves, or take any ownership for their situation.

But even if you accept that choices you've made have accounted for a large part of the problem, the emotional impact of the problem doesn't necessarily lessen. And attitudes are largely (but not completely) a result of personal experience. If you never have any success with love and dating, your attitude, as it relates to love and dating, is almost certainly going to be less positive than someone who routinely has success with love and dating. Bad attitudes can cause problems, but problems can also cause bad attitudes.

OH NOOO...it's a taboo unforgivable sin for men (even those on an autism forum) to want to seek support for their involuntary celibacy or chronic singledom.

Of course, the reason is all arbitrary.

I just wrote a lot below so I'll clarify - it's not written to either of you, it's just something you got me thinking about.

I think the things that tend to bother me are the way people treat each other in general. For instance if one were involuntarily celibate (of either FA or incel reaction type) people generally have a tendency to see this and then heap more coal on top of them. We have an unofficial sort of genetic and social caste system here in the west, under the grinning self-help guru claim of meritocracy, we have a headless social form that's largely protestant and loaded with Christian biblical assumptions but without the God, so it's more like a crass aftertaste of the sorts of biases that come up with religion when they believe in absolute free will and of failure as failure in the eyes of the Lord, but then, without the God component, they also lack the mercy for the downtrodden, the less fortunate, etc. which - lets be honest - life as a celibate of any type would be far less of an issue if that status didn't reach out and touch everything else.

The answer is clearly not Brave New World, ie. force people to not reject sexual advances from anyone, that's a dystopia. I think we could take it in the other direction though - ie. acknowledge success, wealth, exceptional talent, etc. as something like a fluke of genetic lottery, grace, good timing, and good placement. If we treat exceptionalism as the entry requirement for being treated like a human being then we don't have much of a civilization anymore, we have something else. We should really think of Robert Sapolsky's model of these things when we consider anyone whose ended up an addict, homeless, incarcerated, or anything else - only uphold punishment to whatever extent it's needed for purely practical reasons but put much more effort into both a) rehabilitating people and b) creating a social ethos that acknowledges that we're all freaks of one kind of luck or another and, considering that luck, we need to have a wide array of esteemed placements, societies, and cultures rather than an upper class or a genetically healthy class sneering at those 'below' them less fortunate. I still think the genetic lottery will continue to be what it is, you don't have to beat the less fortunate with a rod every day to break their spirit in order for them to get what they are or 'know their place' - that's just more likely to make them even more likely to go to jail, be an addict, or fail at responsible engagement with the world. There are only two roads that make sense - ie. make the 'lesser' the best they can be so society prospers or the other, exterminate the lesser immediately, doing something in between of keeping the lesser alive and then constantly abusing them - that seems to be the least of both worlds.

I'd maybe clarify a few points that I made above.

When I talk about homelessness, criminatlity, addiction, etc. I'm not thinking of it as an 'accept these things from people on an ongoing basis'. They are a sign (homelessness at least in most cases) that something is very wrong. Gabor Mate and Johann Hari cover the logic of addiction and what it's made of in a way that suggests that in a lot of cases it's people pushed out beyond the scope of their coping mechanisms. Criminality runs the whole gamut from financing addictions to mental illness to plain-old sociopathy and psychopathy so that needs probably a fair range of treatment. Homelessness is also a blend of some mentally ill, some addicts, some who've just bottomed out and are having a bad go of things (this group if they're not addicts or mentally ill are probably less likely to stay there long-term), some people are possibly any degree of the three.

If we were to move beyond protestant/puritan outlooks on sociology at a public level though I think it would be about doing the social accountancy that tells us more accurately who people are, where they're at, why they are what they're at, what they need to be in a better place, and we'd want to rebuild our social norms around more objectivity in this area rather than the extractive smash-and-grab that we have now.

I feel sorry for straight guys, because it must be hard to hook up with a woman. I think most people are bisexual to a degree, but people refuse to practice it due to societal pressure to be "straight". Point is, if more men tried batting for the other team, I think we'd see a lot less sexually frustrated neckbeards.

hooking up with guys is just as hard in its own ways. the currency is gym rat, anything less is marginalized.

Agree w/you on capitalism, totally! But I have to ask (showing my age), why would you have to give up the guitar to get a date? At least in the past alot of women were really into musicians, or even if you could just play a little. Is that no longer the case?

The impression, rightly or wrongly, is that they do tend to be overly concerned about looks...<shrug>

You saying that everyone has the capacity to be bisexual but some choose not to practice it is as ignorant as me saying everyone has the capacity to be straight but some choose to rebel against the norm. Seems like you're suffering from mind-blindness here. Just because you are bisexual doesn't mean everyone is.

not "everybody" but according to kinsey et al, a majority have it in them to at least be curious.