Early Retirement Extreme Forums

How many partners have you had in your entire life before finding a stable one, or your current one?

That's actually a really good question. Fortunately, there's an answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

If the math in the link is too abstract, here's what to do.

1) Decide your time limit.E.g. find the optimal partner within N years. You decide N, like "I wanna commit within the next 10 years".
2) Know your rate of finding partners, e.g. x/year. Only count the "stable ones" for this!
3) Calculate N*x/2.7, because science (see link).
4) Commit to the first one who is better than the previous ones you "sampled".

Sample calculation: You wanna commit within 10 years. You meet 2 such candidates per year. <- These are the numbers you know. What follows is math: Therefore, you should stick with the "best-so-far" after meeting ~10*2/2.7=7 candidates and stop dating after that. It will take you ~3--4 years to find that person.

Also known as the 'escalator game'

I had 9 partners while monogamous from 15 to 22, married my 10th partner.
I had 8 partners while monogamous from 42 to 47," married" my 19th partner.
I had 5 partners while polyamorous from 50 to 53, lived with my 24th partner for several years.
I am still (or once again) to varying extents polyamorously engaged with my 19th, my 22nd and my 24th partner.
I had flings with two other men the year I was 56.
So, at 60, my lifetime total is 26 partners over 45 years of sexual activity.

According to the CDC, approximately 13% of U.S. women age 25-49 have had 15 or more partners and approximately 28% of men. However, the median is only 4.3 for women and 6.3 for men. So, there's definitely some skewing to the ...

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_stati ... eystat.htm

ETA: The male/female discrepancy is somewhat corrected by statistic that approximately 1% of U.S. women are at any given time engaged in sex work, with 6% of both women and men having accepted money for sex at least once in lifetime. Approximately 12% of men have paid for sex at some time, but only 1% of women. (I actually find even the 1% hard to believe.)

chenda wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 31, 2025 12:28 pm

Also known as the 'escalator game'

Please explain. Google fails me.

Why would anybody pursuing ERE want to commit to being hired as a secretary?

jacob wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 31, 2025 12:48 pm

Please explain. Google fails me.

You go up an escalator and look at the people coming down towards you. You have to choose a future spouse from them. Choose too early and you might miss out on someone better, choose too late and you might have missed your best option.

There's also some highly rational dating advice based on The Trolley Problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mprkxTmMeAo

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 31, 2025 12:42 pm

So, at 60, my lifetime total is 26 partners over 45 years of sexual activity.

Our attrition rate is identical, 17/26 = 0.6 partners per annum.

I'm question that 1% figure too, although I've heard of a tradition where late middle age western women go out to West Africa and have short term relationships with young African men in return for giving them a taste of first world lifestyle at some beach resort.

chenda wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 31, 2025 1:22 pm

You go up an escalator and look at the people coming down towards you. You have to choose a future spouse from them. Choose too early and you might miss out on someone better, choose too late and you might have missed your best option.

Perfect analogy! In this case, spend the first 36.7% (=1/e) of the ride to establish the base line. Then pick the first next person on the escalator exceeding that base line and stick with that. Statistically, it doesn't get better than that.

Of course real life doesn't quite reflect mathematical optimization, but it does provide a good guide.

chenda wrote:Our attrition rate is identical, 17/26 = 0.6 partners per annum.

Interesting. Given how many potential attractive partners there are out there, one new lover every 18 months seems quite reasonable. Especially if you consider the varying patterns that might apply. For example, a fairly conventional pattern such as 6 month BF, 3 months solo, weekend fling, 6 year relationship, 6 months solo, 3 month vacation fling, 8 month solo, 9 month BF, etc. OR less conventionally, you could just go to Vegas every three years and hire two male escorts for the weekend.

The sex work statistics aren't gender specified, so it could be that the %1 of women paying for sex are hiring other women, maybe as unicorns for threesomes for their husband's 60th birthday.

What I find interesting with this result, is that it is the strategy most people instinctively use.

jacob wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 31, 2025 3:13 pm

In this case, spend the first 36.7% (=1/e) of the ride to establish the base line. Then pick the first next person on the escalator exceeding that base line and stick with that. Statistically, it doesn't get better than that.

Do you ever regret not having kids to pass along this type of wisdom?

Henry wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 31, 2025 3:48 pm

Do you ever regret not having kids to pass along this type of wisdom?

I have you guys which often feels like the same thing.

I have a hard time appreciating the "passing your stuff along to your kids"-argument. In terms of DNA, the natural variation in the human genome is around 0.5%, so any kind of DNA inheritance is randomized out after ln(0.5%)/ln(1/2) ~ 7--8 generations unless you marry your third or seventh cousin in which case the process is slightly slower, yet still inevitably lost. In terms of wisdom or memetic ideas, depending on how good or viral one's ideas are, the internet is far superior to parenting or even teaching or preaching. Unlike DNA, that's on a scale though, so mileage varies.

2. One boyfriend from 14-21 then my current spouse for the last 10+ years.

jacob wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 31, 2025 4:03 pm

In terms of wisdom or memetic ideas, depending on how good or viral one's ideas are, the internet is far superior to parenting or even teaching or preaching.

Indeed, it feels like the role of the parent is predominantly to make sure that the child is not a screwup - IOW, to raise the floor. Beyond that, I feel there's little potential for influencing - if anything, the correlation might be negative, as children like to contradict their parents.

Unfortunately, I don't think parents even have all that much power to prevent kid from being a screw-up. I know of far too many examples of Mom&Dad friends with perfectly wholesome parenting technique with maybe two adult kid who are not screw-ups and one who is a total screw-up. I think of one very competent, sweet-natured woman in particular whose born-to-be-an-azzhole son actually started physically assaulting her when he was a teenager. Although, he is a bit of a special case, because superficially quite intelligent and successful as an adult, but an angry, bullying Narcissist in his personal life or sometimes where his personal life bleeds into his professional life.

However, I do believe that parents have a good deal of influence over which even they might not have much control. For example, both of my adult kids are readers, and that's not something I consciously set out to achieve, but growing up in a household being run by me, you would have to be pretty damn low in innate potential for becoming a reader to not become a reader. OTOH, since earliest toddlerhood ability to attempt to grab one book out of my hand and insert another to be read, neither of my kids have overlapped very much with me in terms of choice of reading material. So, I would posit that you might be underestimating the influence of parents in terms of passing down the cultural capacity for something as broadly useful as "general literacy."

And, the importance of this was reinforced for me during my time spent tutoring reading to children from extremely vocabulary impaired backgrounds. It's not like these kids don't have access to all forms of media. They need the direct interaction with skilled, engaged adults to first acquire the early vocabulary which will form the strong basis for their extended literacy. I would even go so far as to suggest that it might be the case that low core vocabulary at age 4 combined with internet access at age 14 may produce an illiteracy-multiplier.

I would also suggest that early vocabulary access in primary language is like the process of learning a second language in that it becomes qualitatively more difficult with age. Very simple processes like happenstance learning that there are three different possible names for the room/space where you enter your home and take off your boots may have large compounding returns. For example, it may set the conceptual bedrock for the possibility of achieving post-formal level of development in Model of Hierarchal Complexity.

jacob wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 31, 2025 4:03 pm

I have you guys which often feels like the same thing.

I have a hard time appreciating the "passing your stuff along to your kids"-argument. In terms of DNA, the natural variation in the human genome is around 0.5%, so any kind of DNA inheritance is randomized out after ln(0.5%)/ln(1/2) ~ 7--8 generations unless you marry your third or seventh cousin in which case the process is slightly slower, yet still inevitably lost. In terms of wisdom or memetic ideas, depending on how good or viral one's ideas are, the internet is far superior to parenting or even teaching or preaching. Unlike DNA, that's on a scale though, so mileage varies.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Partly because I have no idea what you are talking about and partly because I'm trying to decide if you'd make a good wingman or not.

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 31, 2025 12:42 pm

So, at 60, my lifetime total is 26 partners over 45 years of sexual activity.

A great "relationship" life.
I wonder what kind of tools you used for dating: online apps?

@lillo:

Actually, one thing I noted when reconstructing my pattern was that my relationship "rate" wasn't very different before or after the invention of internet dating. At my age internet dating is much easier than meeting people in person simply because it sorts for current availability. Also, I only rarely drink, and I am usually in bed by 9 PM, so hanging out at elder singles bars would not be my thing. When you are young and almost everybody else is currently single, it is almost always going to be beneficial to try both online and in-person methods.