Dating A Promiscuous Woman

• David Tian Ph.D. explains why some men are often turned off by promiscuity.
• David Tian Ph.D. turns to evolutionary psychology to explain disgust mechanism.
• In this Man Up episode, David Tian Ph.D. relates character and promiscuity.

Boom! Stop. I’m David Tian, PhD, and in this video, I answer the question: Should you be disgusted by promiscuous women? Welcome to Man Up Episode 216.

Masculinity for the Intelligent Man. I’m David Tian, PhD., and this is Man Up!

Hey, welcome! I’m David Tian, PhD., and this is Episode 216 of Man Up. For over the past 10 years, I have been helping hundreds of thousands of people in over 87 countries attain success, happiness and fulfillment in life and love, and welcome to Man Up.

This is an episode that we tried to film yesterday, and there was a technical issue so we got to re-do it. It’s also the first time I’ve ever done a Man Up episode in a classroom in Singapore. We’re in the process of a weekend-long 21+ hour intensive, and I’m taking advantage of this time – a couple of guys just walked into the room now – but just ahead of the core content to do this segment. Actually, the answer to this I’m going to give will be a little different from the aborted version yesterday.

The question comes from Chris in the Man Up private Facebook group. I’ve been meaning to do this video for a long time because I’ve been getting a lot of requests on this topic. It’s been coming up a lot in the Man Up group for the past 2 – 3 months. I’ve chosen one version of it, the earliest, one of the earliest versions where I screenshot that. It’s come up in a lot of other comments and questions. It’s a bigger topic, and whenever it’s a bigger topic, I always put it off until I have enough time to do it. Here we go.

Anyways, this one comes from Chris. In the Man Up private Facebook group. Join the group. Click the link. Join the group. We’ll see you inside the group. So Chris asks:

“Does anyone else get super turned off when you find out the girl you’re dating has slept with a few dozen men? I think it’s normal… I don’t know what to think because her personality is addicting. Any thoughts?” I’m assuming he means addictive, or maybe he’s addicted to her personality. The first comment comes from Neil, which is indicative of further comments. I screenshot this 7 hours after he originally posted it, but there are already dozens of comments on that post.

Neil’s first comment is: A couple dozen? Brother, it’s 2017, and a 35 year-old single woman who is half good-looking has likely slept with many more than that. He said ‘a few dozen’, that’s 36 just to be clear. She’s had sex with over 36 men, but Neil says ’35 year-old single woman who is half good-looking has likely slept with many more than that.’ Neil, within 7 hours, got 5 likes.

Donnell posted: “I could care less. That’s her business. We got body counts, too.” And that also got 5 likes.

Aaron wrote: “She’s only human. I’d say take her to get tested.” Okay, that’s got a few likes there already, and that’s the first 7 hours.

Okay, great. Overall, the comments, I would say about 90% of them, were along those lines of non-judgmental and open-minded, which is good. To actually answer Chris’ question, I’m going to bring in some science to explain to you why you would feel turned off, and that is because of the natural mechanism of disgust, the reason being that if a female has had many sexual partners, it’s not clear – there’s some ambiguity or question about whether the child she has is yours.

You can’t monitor the female 24 hours. You have to sleep at some point, and maybe she’ll sneak off. In a tribal area, like tribal times – again, we’re evolved to be optimized for life 70,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago. That’s what scientists call evolutionary lag, and we’re not optimized for it now, just as we’re not optimized to resist Krispy Kreme donuts. If you saw a Krispy Kreme donut 70,000 years ago in the savanna, you should probably eat it because you’re never going to see something like that ever again. We don’t have natural defenses for that sort of thing.

We’re evolved for a time a long time ago. And a long time ago, 70,000 – 100,000 or more years ago, there was paternity uncertainty. There was quite a lot of uncertainty about whether the child was yours because you couldn’t monitor her all the time. That’s when your mother, and your father, and your brothers chip in to monitor the female to make sure she’s not hooking up with some other guy down the river or whatever when no one is watching.

That’s part of it. If she has a history of hooking up with lots of dudes and you hook up with her, you’re always wondering, “Has she changed?” That makes sense. There would be a naturally-evolved disgust mechanism versus if you knew for certain that she was a virgin, maybe because her reputation of purity and so on, and all the people who’ve ever spent any time with her can vouch for that and so forth, and it’s pretty air tight as far as her credibility goes. That would be valued more, versus somebody who has already hooked up with lots of other guys and has a history. Of course, nowadays, just like we can resist Krispy Kreme donuts, if we allow our prefrontal cortexes to reign, in other words our willpower to say no, you now to, in the modern world, can say no to your natural reflexes because your naturally evolved instincts are for survival and replication.

That doesn’t mean – if you just follow survival and replication – will not optimize you for life now. Perfectly reasonable that you would say, “I naturally would feel disgust at a female who has had lots of different sexual partners in the past.” But like now, I can use my brain, my prefrontal cortex to resist that old-fashioned, traditional, conservative, gut reaction and I will be more enlightened and liberal and accepting for however many sexual partners she has. That’s cool. I’m glad that’s the case because I’ve had too many sexual partners myself, and I’m glad that when people don’t judge me just for that.

That’s a good thing, but it’s important to understand why you would naturally have that disgust mechanism. If you want to go even further into it, there’s an entire book written by one of the most famous evolutionary psychologists ever named David Buss. The book is called The Dangerous Passion. Amazon search that. The entire book explains in evolutionary psychology terms why there would be that jealousy, why jealousy would erupt when you find out that the female has had sex with another man. Of course, paternity uncertainty is a big part of it.

Of course, if you find out that she’s had sex with a lot of different guys and then she gets pregnant, there’s still that nagging doubt that will occur naturally, but then you override it with your rationality. It’s normal to feel that disgust that Chris would feel.

The second point I want to make here is something that Americans will really like, which is character. The development of your character. Here is a phrase or a saying that comes down to us from Aquinas or Augustine, or something like that, and if you’re in a Christian circle, you would recognize this: “With thought, reap in action. Sow in action, reap a habit. Sow habits, reap character. Sow character, reap a destiny.” In other words, destiny being your life, how your life goes. The development of character is through repeated action. You become what you repeatedly do.

It’s sort of like saying, “If she’s going to be a slut or I mean promiscuous before her first three decades, well, I guess she’s sexually active for 12 years up until 30, and she decides to hook up with 36 guys. Basically, she’s hooking up with 3 different guys every year. Usually, within that period, she’ll have a longer-term relationship somewhere in there so it’ll be at a rate of more than 3 a year when she’s single. Whatever, 36 guys when she’s 30. Very reasonable, actually, especially in America or Western countries like you’re in, Western Europe.

There you go. If she does that, and then suddenly you expect her to stop that abundance of sexual pleasure flowing into her, and focus on one, and stay without one for the next – assuming she lives till she’s 80 – for the next 50 years of her life, and you expect that she can just change the way she thinks, behaves, and her control over her desires just like that. Well, sort of like an obese person saying, “I’m going to eat whatever I want, whenever I want, and not work out until I’m 30-something. Whenever I decide to, it’ll be an easy matter to lose all that fat and change my entire diet, fitness regimen, and habits.”

If you’ve ever tried to change your body drastically and you’re older, like in your 30s or late 20s, or beyond, you would know how hard that is. I’m 40 right now. I just recently came back from a 2-month trip through New York, Toronto, the Toronto area, on the way back through Austria and then back to Bangkok. I didn’t step on a weight scale the entire time, but I did before we left. When I got on the weight scale the morning of the flight from Bangkok to New York, I was around 75, 74.something, and then I didn’t take my weight for the 2 months, and then I came back, stepped on the scale, I was 82.3. That’s 7.3kg gain in 2 months. That’s about 16 pounds or so in 2 months.

I tell you almost all of that was fast, because I couldn’t resist the amazing food in North America and in Europe. Of course, a lot of it compared to sushi or something, it was quite fatty. I couldn’t resist the pizza, and the poutine, and the burgers, and all the sandwiches, and the amazing craft beer. I had a ton of craft beer, way too much craft beer but it was delicious. I don’t regret a single second of it, but now I’m having to work really, really hard. I went to Bali for a couple of weeks and I gorged on amazing food there. I didn’t start my diet until a week and a half ago.

Last week, I worked really hard to get down to 79.0 from 82.3. I lost a little bit, like 1 kg in Bali. Anyway, 79. And then I had pasta, and I got on the scale and I was 79.8. I was just so fucking pissed. The thing is, a good diet, like for me, my standard diet was intermittent fasting. I threfw intermittent fasting out the window, sort of like not on purpose, but I couldn’t resist the awesome food. I threw out the IF when I was in North America and Europe. And going back to IF is also a shift. I really enjoy it, but it’s still a lot of willpower to resist food – you know, right now in Singapore, I’m passing amazing restaurants and cheap food that’s really tasty everywhere I go, so it’s constantly exercising my willpower to say no to that.

Normally, when I’m in the groove, like I’ve been in this diet for 2 – 3 months, it’s pretty easy to put the blinders on because I’m used to it. But now I have the habit of looking at the fucking display counters in Starbucks, and I’m like, “Oh!” And I now have to think, “Okay, my binge meal not binge day, my binge meal I will have that and make a mental note to reward myself.” But you know, if I’m in the habit of doing that, it’s fine after 2 – 3 months. But just even 2 months of going on – and I was on a pretty strict diet for 2 years, or maybe even longer. I didn’t even think about how long. But for many years, I’ve been on IF, normally, as my default diet.

I go off for 2 months, coming back is hard. Just like anybody who goes to the gym, who has been to the gym and does a proper workout, after having not worked out for a very long time, like in some cases at any time, like they’ve never worked out, and they go work out. And then the next day if they had a proper workout, they should be sore all over the fucking place. That hard start of that week after that big break is really, really tough.

Many people can’t actually persist. I’ve seen statistics that say fitness club memberships over almost 90% of them are unused more than 2 months out of 12. People just can’t stick with it, it’s just too hard. So to assume that she will be one-way for all of her life, or her adult life, and then suddenly when she meets you, suddenly switch and never have any problems with that for the rest of her fucking life? Well, this is called delusion. By the way, that’s how character is developed. She’s created a certain character. Now, how can you tell what somebody’s character is like? What’s the best way to tell?

An example I use as an analogy is water. If you put pressure on water, it can become colder or hotter. It depends on the kind of pressure. Just like character, right? But then if you return the water to room temperature, it will go back to room temperature with absent external pressure. Just like a woman or a man, your character will return back to your default character absent any external pressure. A lot of guys get into a relationship with a girl, and they become the external pressure. You see this all the time in the Man Up group.

Also, guys are asking all these questions about jealousy and things like that. When they’re there, the girl behaves. When they’re not there, they don’t know what’s going on, so they get all antsy. Same with the girl: The girl who dates a player when she’s not around to monitor him and shit, what do you think that motherfucker is doing? It goes both ways, definitely. I know there are a lot of guys who are watching this, mostly.

If you think that suddenly, after being promiscuous for 10+ years, suddenly she’ll change, but then she’s got to go to her friend’s bachelorette party in Vegas for the weekend, would you be surprised if she reverts back to the character that she was inhabiting for the much longer span of time, and especially in her formative years, the earlier she started hooking up promiscuously, the more set that character is. It’s the nature of the brain and character formation, the earliest it is, the stronger it is. She’s going to have fun in Vegas, what the fuck you think is going to happen?

Character is a really important thing. How do you know whether you should trust an employee or a new hire? What do you do when you have a new hire? He says, “Look, prospective employer. Yes, I have a horrible track record. I fuck everything up and bla-bla-bla. You can see I have no good references and all of that, but I’ve turned a new leaf because of this company. I love this company. Trust me.” As an employer, do you think that that is a good hiring idea? This is just common-fucking-sense, and yet when dudes come at it with the women…

Basically, what’s happened is, the feminism in the liberal world, mostly Western liberal world, has shamed men to accept promiscuity as a norm. That’s fine, because rationality, you’re right, there is no argument. If you want to allow her to have many multiple male partners later on in her life because you like the fact that you get to do that, so you have some kind of open relationship, then that’s great. If you want to just have an open relationship, find the most sexually open and liberal woman you can. She’ll totally accept it. She probably proposed, and all you got to do is say yes to that and you’ll have your nice, polyamorous relationship.

Yes, those are very difficult, especially as they go on in time, but everything worthwhile is difficult so power to you. But if you want to have a monogamous relationship where you value loyalty, integrity, resisting temptation, delayed gratification, morals, things like being able to say no to the many to have that one? Well, you’ve got to look in her character in her past to see whether she’s developed a character over time to sustain that kind of living. Because if you expect to be the external pressure that will maintain that water, the character, the temperature of your desire, but then you remove the external pressure, which is you, then don’t be surprised when she reverts back to her room temperature character.

Character. That’s the other consideration, but a lot of guys are like, “Hey, you know, she’s fucked half the football team, or the whole football team. That’s okay, because it’s the 21st century now. Accept everybody.” I totally get it. It makes a lot of sense, power to them, but don’t be surprised when she reverts back to that when the going gets tough, when the relationship gets hard, when you go through that dip. What’s she going to revert to? What she knows her comfort zone. Also, she’s going to miss the excitement and the novelty of having new partners. I know this is a challenge for a lot of dudes, so speaking to the women now who watch this.

If you date a player and he doesn’t have some major cathartic life-changing breakthrough experience that will often involve some kind of suicidal thoughts or something, absent that huge cathartic experience, do not trust that guy. Trust me, I know. I know from the inside. It took 7 – 8 years of literally fucking all over the world, like hundreds of women. I can say that now because I can use that as a little marketing tactic, but most guys don’t get to benefit off of that.

But like, was it fun? Yeah. But was it really empty in the last part of it? Like, 7 – 8 years, it was fun up to here, and then I started to get empty, I started looking for other meaning in life, deeper meaning in life. But it took me that long. And I did it full-time, hundreds of partners. If you think, “Okay, I allow her to screw 30 guys, she’ll get it out of her system.” Really? Not in the 21st-fucking-century. Why? Because everybody has this. This was not available to our parents’ generation. They weren’t constantly tempted everywhere they went. Even to look at fucking porn, they’d get a magazine, go find a private place somewhere and then jerk off. A magazine, right?

And then you get VHS. Now, it’s just right here, and soon it’ll be like headset VR shit, you know? If she’s on the normal social media channels, Instagram, which is basically a softcore porn platform. And then Snapchat, which is constant – as soon as she opens up that up, it’s like Cosmopolitan magazine, all these other things are getting thrown at her. Basically, pop culture of Kardashian’s ass, and the lives of these Kardashians. You have so many examples from the Kardashians about how things have changed so far. I do that in an earlier video, I’m not going to do that.

Anyway, there’s disgust, character. Finally, I’m just going to end off with one little contrast. I totally understand what you guys in America are at, and actually Europe was earlier than that when they had to encounter this. But West vs East… Alright. So, different attitudes towards sex, sexual mores. The East suffers from a lot of sexual shame overall, in general, like as default. You can assume that to be the case there if you were raised somewhere in Asia. The East is a misnomer, it should be A like Asia.

And the West, there obviously is still sexual shame, especially from religion, but there’s a lot more liberal attitude. Part of the down side, you might say, for people like Chris or James, the guy who asked the question, is that part of the down side is that women are free to hook up with lots of different dudes without thinking about the long-term consequences to their character formation. They’re still slut-shaming, obviously, but it’s not PC to slut shame. It’s not even PC to fat shame or anything, you’re not supposed to shame people at all.

Except for men. You can shame men all you want in PC liberal culture. As you can see, men shame each other as well. It’s just like women shame each other. In the West, the fallout is that you’re going to get a girl who you would think is conservative, so maybe she’s in some small town in the Midwest or something, and would normally not be exposed to the temptations of the promiscuous world of Vegas or LA. But then she has this thing, and it’s constantly plugged into the internet, and is constantly reminded of how much pleasure there is out there in the world. If she just hopped on an airplane and got out there, especially if she’s very attractive, because then she will have lots of guys propositioning her and offering her free things.

And it’ll be hard for her to say no. In fact, if you’re an attractive woman in any major city anywhere in a liberal country, you’re constantly having to say no. You’re just walking down the street, 10 minutes of walking down the street in New York, if you’re an attractive woman, there are guys hooting, hollering, and whistling at you. And serious players, too, strike up conversation, want to hook up, or get started on the hook-up process. You’re constantly saying no. For every guy, even if she’s a total promiscuous woman, I was going to say slut but I’m not going to use that term. Promiscuous woman, just as I was a man slut back then, so promiscuous man, she has to say no a lot more than the dudes get to say no.

A woman who is even half-decent looking in a night club will just need to stand there for a while before she finds a guy who is willing to have sex with her. It’s pretty easy. Whereas for a man, he’s got to work at it and get some game. The average man doesn’t stand a chance to hook up with an attractive woman. I mean, even normal women, let alone an attractive woman. In the west, the mores have changed so that you’ve allowed women to be quite promiscuous and the pressure when you have the equality of the sexes professionally, is that women don’t want to take time out of work to have babies.

They’re engaging in male-oriented mating strategies, so they’re just like male short-term mating strategies. Hook up with as many hot people of the opposite gender as you can until you decide, finally – or until your mating value tanks and it becomes too hard for you to do that, so then you settle for the one person who will guarantee you sexual pleasure and then you can have babies.

The problem with women is that the medical science is not caught up to the point where versus viagra or cialis, where they can continue to have babies after a certain age, especially when they hit menopause. Technically, that’s out of the question then, but even as they approach menopause, it gets very risky. Their ovaries are going to be screaming, like, “Have babies now!” When they’re in 30-something. It’s going to be hard to suddenly switch gears, character formation but also biologically speaking now, you’re going to have a different way of living.

And a different way of thinking in terms of the habits of thought and feeling that would go along with a life of loyalty, integrity, and responsibility towards one human being. Also, seeing the sanctity of the sexual act. For the liberal modern, there is no such thing, it’s just a biological thing that you just do when you fuck and you have babies. If that’s continuously the case, there’s no logical reason why you should ever protect the sexual act then. If it’s just a biological act for pleasure, like eating is, then just put on some birth control and go at it. This is the attitude in the 60s and 70s. Maybe that’s the way things are eventually going to go, like we’re going to go the way of ancient Rome.

Many of the things about current-day America remind me of the fall or decline or the Roman Empire. Anyway, that’s the West. In the East, as I am here now in Singapore, and I know for many of you it may not be as pertinent, this particular question. That’s simply because there’s still a lot of the traditional standards around sex, mores, and values, from your parents’ generation. There’s a huge divide between the parents’ views around sexual values and the 20, 30 somethings.

That’s simply because of how late those Asian societies were liberalized. If you want to find a woman who hasn’t slept with an entire football team, and she’s attractive, you’re basically going to have to find a woman who has said no for religious reasons, usually like some external force that’s always present, i.e. God because you can’t escape the eyes of God. Every time you slip up, you’re supposed to repent and shit. Technically, you can’t escape the eyes of God.

Instead of you being the external pressure, it would be some supernatural thing. Absent a religious reason, I suppose she knows the long-term effects of her mating value, if she were to retain that purity. But you know, considering how these guys treat each other and then, “Hey, let her fuck as many guys as she wants.” There’s very little reason for her not to just accumulate maximum pleasure, right? So, if you want to find a woman who hasn’t been very promiscuous, and whose life, and habits of thought and action, have resulted in a character that will make it very easy for her to be loyal and responsible – that’s the other issue about character. If your character doesn’t match what you want, then you’ll have to apply a lot of willpower like dieting. It’s really hard to do that.

Whereas if you’re already in the habit of exercising that discipline over your body, of saying no to sexual pleasures unless given certain conditions, circumstances, and context, and then it would be effortless if you’re used to it. But if you’re not to used to it, it’s going to be really hard. That’s one of the reasons why the male players forget it. They get into a relationship. When the going gets tough, you know where they’re going? They’re going to strip clubs and hook up. To them, it’s not that big a deal. And then how to get back at that girl that they’re in an argument with – wow, it’s real easy to get that ego boost.

The only reason you can trust a male who is not religious to actually be loyal to you in the long-term relationship is either he’s dumb; he has no logical reasoning capabilities, so he doesn’t see that’s a logically plausible argument or stronger argument for liberal values around sex. He’ll just buy into whatever the society is, and that condition is also the society is pushing him towards being conservative so he won’t just step out. He’s either dumb.

Secondly, he’s religious. That’s another external factor. Thirdly, he’s butt-ugly or has no game. He has no other alternatives. It’s not easy for him to just walk into a night club and meet another girl. That’s why he’s just going to keep going back to you because it’s too hard for him to get an alternative, or he’s poor. You’re generally looking for that combination: no game, ugly, and poor. Then that guy’s got no chance. You can bet he will be loyal to you, but not out of free will, it’s because he’s got no choice. And then he’ll basically be your little bitch because he’s got no choice, right? But then he’ll turn you off and you probably won’t want a guy like that because he’s your bitch.

Anyway, that’s the only guy you can trust. That’s the only type of guy you can trust in the West. Or the fifth one, I forgot, is a big cathartic breakthrough experience. I’ve shared a bit of my own in a separate video called “Who is David Tian?” where I tell you a little bit about my story of how I arrived to that point. Absent those five factors, girls shouldn’t trust dudes either who were coming out of the liberal west. A lot of dudes are like, “Hey, no. No way, man. I’ve hooked with 36-50 girls or more, but when the time comes, no problem.”

I’ll tell you this. Unless you have burned your way through full-time dating like I did, 7 – 8 years of hundreds of women, you’ll still not get it out of your system. I know guys from my player days who are in their mid-40s who are dating really gorgeous, cover models, runway models, fashion models. In some cases, tried to be monogamous for years. Now, the marriage falls apart, they’re back out and they are insatiable. It’s like, man, mid-40s, still going at it. There’s got to be a big, cathartic experience, otherwise you would still keep going through, like Hugh Hefner did all the way to the end.

And in the East, of course, the society helps you out. If you’re looking for a woman who’s developed strong character for loyalty and responsibility, I’d recommend you find somebody who grew up in a different society or culture that didn’t defend the rights of women, or actually didn’t defend the rights of women to be promiscuous. Maybe, obviously, allowed them to, but there’s still awareness around character. The other issue about why the west is so liberal is because in liberal society, they don’t even know why they need to have ethics. Ethics are purely utilitarian, like, if it benefits you and I, then we’ll act this way. But there’s no greater reason beyond that. If everybody agrees that they’ll act one way, they’ll all act that way regardless of what the good is.

That’s one thing that gets lost: discussion about what is ethics, what is good, and so on. How do you expect people to live according to a moral standard when there’s no argument for the moral standard? There you go. Anyway, I was a professor of ethics, so I can go a lot further in that, but I’ll stop there. Just to recap it, you got a nice little board here. It’s normal, natural, and evolutionarily explainable why you would have a natural disgust mechanism as a male towards a promiscuous female.

Now, there’s also – even in the modern times – a reason why you shouldn’t pursue promiscuity and you should look for people who aren’t promiscuous or don’t have a promiscuous past, because of the science of character formation. Thirdly, there still are women, and there are females in this world, who have maintained their purity, not just for religious reasons, but consciously for other reasons. They are rare, cherish them when you find them, uphold them as a standard when you find them. They’re out there.

Of course, the caveat is: If the person encounters some kind of mid-life crisis in a major way, and had a big catharsis kind of conversion experience to a different way of life, that person you can trust because of that big breakage: the point where they reach that breakthrough where they’re saying, “Enough! This is it. I don’t want to experience this anymore. It’s enough. I want to move on.” That person you can go to.

I haven’t had my morning coffee, so I’m stumbling in my words, but I got to get it out there. There you go, Episode 216. Alright, join the private Man Up Facebook group. A lot of activity there, over 20,000 guys now. I’ll see you inside the private Man Up Facebook group. Until next time, David Tian. Man Up!