Video summary
The podcast explores the often controversial relationship between an individual's body count and their long-term success in monogamous pair bonds, arguing that a higher number of past sexual partners is intuitively linked to lower future relationship stability. The host cites data indicating that individuals with high body counts are statistically more likely to experience divorce, report lower satisfaction levels, and engage in infidelity compared to those with fewer partners. This correlation holds true for both men and women, though the effect may be even stronger in men according to some analyses. A specific study by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) highlighted that individuals with a body count above five had an infidelity rate double that of those below this threshold, reinforcing the idea that past behavior serves as a strong predictor of future actions regarding sexual fidelity. The discussion delves into why casual sex might predict cheating later in life, drawing parallels to how unhealthy habits like excessive drinking or drug use can become entrenched patterns rather than temporary fixes for unfulfilled needs. While some argue that early exploration allows people to "get it out of their system," the host counters this by noting that building a habit often solidifies behavior rather than eliminating future desire for similar experiences. The transcript references David Buss's influential work, *The Evolution of Desire*, which posits that premarital sex is one of the single biggest predictors of extramarital affairs. However, the speakers clarify that relationship dissatisfaction acts as a confounding variable; when a relationship falters, underlying traits like high sociosexuality or wandering eyes become more salient and visible, making it difficult to isolate casual sex itself as the sole cause without experimental data that is ethically impossible to gather in humans. A significant portion of the conversation addresses the nuance required when interpreting body count statistics, emphasizing that aggregate data often masks individual motivations and contexts. The host introduces a behavioral genetics analogy from Robert Plomin regarding obesity: just as there are many different biological and lifestyle routes to becoming overweight (such as ghrelin levels or metabolism), there are diverse reasons for having a high sexual history, including social approval needs, difficulty with commitment, job requirements like being a stripper, or simply a naturally higher sex drive. Consequently, looking at the raw number alone is insufficient; one must understand *how* those encounters occurred and what they signify about an individual's personality traits rather than assuming all paths to that statistic lead to the same outcome. The speakers conclude by advocating for a more sophisticated evaluation of sexual history based on recency and relationship context rather than just total numbers. Recent research discussed, involving teams like Thomas's with Stuart Williams, suggests that people are sensitive to whether past partners were long-term relationships or one-night stands; sleeping with ten people in college is fundamentally different from having ten partners within the last month for a thirty-four-year-old. The host advises listeners against adopting a "caveman" mindset where low body count equals good and high equals bad, suggesting instead that context matters immensely—for instance, five long-term relationships by age 30 might be a green flag indicating experience with commitment, whereas five one-night stands in college for an undergraduate is expected. Ultimately, while the data suggests caution regarding sowing wild oats if lifelong monogamy is the goal due to habit formation risks, individual cases can vary significantly based on underlying motivations and the specific nature of past sexual experiences.
Read the full video transcript
What is the impact of body count on
long-term relationship success?
Um
I mean, it's very intuitive. I'm always
surprised by how controversial this is.
Cuz I say it quite a bit. And I say it
not even kind of bracing for impact if
that makes sense. I'm like, this will
this seems intuitive, right? But people
who love to have casual sex and sleep
with lots of people and hop from
relationship to relationship and as a
result of all those behaviors end up
with a higher number for their age than
you would otherwise expect, those people
are less likely to succeed in long-term
monogamous pair bonds than people who do
not like doing that and do not have that
sort of track record.
And that And when I say succeed, I mean
in terms of every outcome measure. I
mean
you know, more likely to get divorced,
less likely to be satisfied in their
relationships. Uh
more likely to cheat. Uh there there was
one analysis, I believe it was by the
IFS, where
if an individual, and this is from this
is all true for men and women, by the
way. There I know that on the internet
there's a huge focus on women, but the
all these effects, there's no sex
difference and sometimes the effect is
even larger in men than women.
So, that aside, right? We're we're we're
talking about everybody here. Uh
if you subdivided the data neatly and
said people with a body count below
five, people with a body count above
five, what's their infidelity rate? The
infidelity rate of the above five five
group was double
that of the below five group.
>> No way.
>> Yeah. So, this is not this is not a
nothing burger, right? This this is a
thing. Uh and the reason it's a thing is
very intuitive, right? It's like
what is an affair, for example? Like an
affair is a form of casual sex. And so,
if someone has had lots of casual sex,
they're telling you to some extent, oh,
I'm more likely than someone who has not
done this. I I probably enjoy this,
right? Cuz I keep doing it over and
over. I mean, I'm sure there's some
cases where that's not true and and
people change, obviously, but it's a
huge, you know, past behavior is a
predictor of future future behavior. So,
you're basically saying, oh, I've got
Like when people are surprised by this,
I'm surprised. Cuz it's like you've got
two groups of people, let's say, people
who have slept with lots of people and
people who haven't. And you're trying to
predict who's going to sleep with more
people in the future going forward.
>> Mhm.
Like why why would you why would you
predict anything other than
>> the only explanation I could come up
with is that somebody has closed the
loops.
>> Oh, they've gotten it out of their
system. Yeah, the classic I Imagine if I
said that with alcohol.
Right? I'm going to get it out of my
system. I'm going to So, I can drink
less in the future, I'm going to drink
more during my undergrad, right? Imagine
if I said this with drug use. Imagine if
I said it with positive things. Imagine
if I said I'm going to get the gym out
of my system, right? That That's That
doesn't happen. That it's like, oh, I'm
going to go to the gym every day. I'm
going to work on my muscles. And then in
the future I am not going to want to do
it as much cuz I used to do it. Like you
build healthy habits, you build
unhealthy habits. Do you think
>> Do you think that there's ever the
potential for somebody to stray because
they had unfulfilled variation early on
in their sexual uh
career? That's I mean, it's a really
good point and I think that what we're
talking about here is average population
level trends, which is the sort of thing
this data is good for.
I think that there probably is some
causal relationship, but the data don't
speak to that yet and you actually can't
ethically design the sort of experiment
that would tell us.
>> [ __ ] ethics boards, dude. They suck
so hard. Um so, I look at
>> questions that we could answer.
>> I think I think it's an interesting one
around um how people interpret
sociosexuality. Buss had in The
Evolution of Desire, I swear one of the
lines that's still in my Readwise is
the single biggest predictor of
extramarital sex is premarital sex.
Yeah. Is that true? Well, it's sex
predicting sex, right?
>> But is that true?
>> Is the single biggest predictor of
extramarital sex premarital sex?
>> Single biggest predictor? I Well, it's
David Buss saying it, so I'm very
tempted to just
>> Slightly older book, though, right? Like
has Evolution of Desire is what how old
now?
>> Yeah, that's true. It's It's It's like
1999, I believe. So, I I mean, in my
data and looking at other people's data,
I would say relationship
dissatisfaction. Mhm. But that is
>> Could that be due to
>> about that and think about relationship
satisfaction as like the dam lifting up.
Mhm.
>> all the other causes being allowed to
run roughshod
>> Relationship dissatisfaction is not one
of the predictors that you could be able
to
>> say in advance.
>> Exactly. Exactly. It's like obviously
when things get bad, they get bad,
right? It's It's kind of it's predicting
itself.
>> it's because they've got wandering eyes.
Maybe it's because they're not paying as
much attention to you.
>> And then it's it's also it's not a like
it's it's kind of an all cause thing
because as soon as you don't care about
the relationship, any other motivator
becomes much more pertinent. Like maybe
you were the sort who never had a
wandering eye and you know, couldn't be
swayed.
>> Dissatisfaction has now meant that the
first thing to the surface is now what
burst out and the most salient
personality trait you have is your high
sociosexuality because you slept with 25
women before you got to this
relationship.
>> the the best predictor of extramarital
sex is premarital sex. Maybe that's
true. I mean, I do know that the if you
look at people who do go the very
religious route and they
just have one person and and that sort
of thing that that I mean, they do tend
to have or and they don't live together
before
marriage and they do all that stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, they seem to do they seem
to do pretty well. Um I do think,
though, that this is correlational and
so
there are going to be individuals who
don't fit that pattern and one thing
that we cannot test, this is a huge
caveat, is that we can't know like if
you take that person who had a
a high body count, let's say, and
cheated, we can't rewind the clock and
say, oh, if you hadn't
built that habit, you would have like
maybe maybe it would have been maybe it
would have been even more like like like
I can't recommend from this like I can't
I can't Like tentatively, I would say
it's probably not a good idea if you
want to marry for life, it's probably
not a good idea to sow your wild oats.
It's probably not a good idea to try and
get it out of your system with the
caveat that
it's hard to know from the data with
great confidence that
um
that there aren't individual cases where
that actually is protective.
>> this I I really wanted to get into this.
The causal effect, somebody is
somebody's just lost their virginity
yesterday and they're going to get into
a relationship which is going to be
their lifelong relationship in eight
years' time. They want to have sex with
lots of people. They want to. They
really really want to.
>> is me saying hold it back is that going
to make them less likely to cheat? Yeah,
I I It's a good point. It's a good
point. I think
>> And does it change? Does it change? Does
you sleeping around cuz one of the
questions would be, well, you know what
it's like,
developed some sort of habit, some sort
of lifestyle, you've maybe gotten rid of
some of the stigma that's a part of it,
inculcated some kind of [ __ ] sexual
rhythm with new partners, whatever it
might be. Uh you know what's out there.
Yeah. Right?
>> know the mechanics. I mean, people who
have never had a one-night stand
actually don't know the mechanics of a
one-night stand.
>> They don't know how that works.
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I That's such
an interesting point. I think one-night
stands are apart from in modern media,
often romanticized by people that have
maybe only been in long-term
relationships, like
the taxi home, the [ __ ] cleaning up
of the clothes in the morning, it's not
the beginning of a Love Actually movie.
It's not. It's just It's
steeped in awkwardness and stories that
you tell your friends in WhatsApp chats
the next day.
>> Yeah, I think there's some cases
probably. I mean, I I think there's some
cases probably where people have that
experience, don't like it, and it
actually solidifies their commitment to
monogamy.
>> Yeah, [ __ ] I'm not doing that again.
>> But the I think that when we're talking
about I made it I made kind of a glib
analogy to I was feeling quite cheeky,
made an analogy to alcohol, that kind of
thing. And I think that to to walk that
back to some degree, I would say that
it's probably true if we're talking
about like very high cases. Um but there
probably are some cases within normal
normal range where like if you came to
me and said, look, Mac, and I really
really want to drink and party and and
all that sort of stuff, like would my
advice really be going into undergrad,
well, don't do it because you'll become
an alcoholic later, or would it be like,
well, have a have a little bit of fun,
try not to go too far, and then after
check back in and maybe maybe don't.
Maybe you could make similar advice
about like how to navigate sexuality if
you are someone who's, you know,
sociosexual. This is the problem with
these sort of like big population level
data, these big surveys. We don't know
what the underlying motivation is.
>> Yeah. Like there are lots of different
ways.
Robert Plomin, I always think about
Robert Plomin when I think about this
stuff. I always think about casual sex.
I think about Robert Plomin.
>> Yeah. And um he said to me that uh
there's lots of ways to get fat. He's
talking about behavioral genetics. He's
saying there's lots of different ways to
get fat. Some people have a higher
ghrelin release. Some people have got a
bigger stomach. Uh some people just
don't like exercise. Some people have
got a slower
lower BMR. Uh lots of a million other
ways I haven't thought about.
Okay.
What that means is when you look at fat
people, you are looking at many
different routes up the top of the same
mountain. When you look at high body
count people, Yeah. many different
routes up that. Maybe it's because of
social approval. Maybe it's because of a
need for connection. Maybe it's because
of a difficulty with commitment. Maybe
it's because of high sociosexuality.
Maybe it's because of a high sex drive.
Maybe it's because Whatever the
Whatever's going on. Maybe it's because
of your job, right? You're a stripper or
you Whatever. a [ __ ] metal guitar
player.
>> I think in that case the the negative
predictive outcomes might might be
maintained, but yeah. But
>> I I completely take your point.
>> And we don't know how people are getting
up because we're just taking these big
aggregate pieces of data. I also think
that another thing to keep in mind,
we're the reason that body count means
anything is likely because it's a proxy
for sociosexuality. And so when we're
looking at an aggregate as you say, sure
there's some predictive benefit.
But if we were to look at any individual
case, you could assess it and say like,
okay, well how predictive is this of
sociosexuality? And we even see this in
the recent research from
again, it's it's it's Thomas's team and
I believe Stuart Williams is on it as
well again, where they looked at this
across nations and they took a more
fine-grained nuanced approach than they
did in 2019. And what they did was they
looked at
essentially the effects of recency,
right? And it's like if someone let the
number can be the same, but if it's like
all of them and you can really think
about this, like what's a better cue to
sociosexuality? If you're 38 and you
meet a woman who's 34 and she's slept
with 10 people, but they were all in
undergrad and since then it's been like
one boyfriend, right? That's very
different to meeting the same
34-year-old woman who's like, you know,
actually it's been 10, but they were all
this past month, right? And you're
number 11. Like what's what's the cue,
right? In terms of personality. And what
they found was that people were
sensitive to that. And I think they're
sensitive to a lot of things. Like I
think that
if you're talking about like like a body
count of seven being quote-unquote high,
it's not really high for like a
35-year-old, right? And it's certainly
not a 35-year-old for someone who's only
slept with one person in the last 10
years.
>> Yeah, exactly.
But it actually is insanely high for
like a 19-year-old, right? Like that's a
shock, right? So I think that for people
listening to this,
I would say that if you're trying to I
mean, I talk about this stuff first and
foremost because I find it interesting.
I'm not necessarily like it's kind of a
second-order effect.
>> Lifestyle advice.
>> Yeah, if anything happens to be useful,
that's wonderful, right? And we want to
extract that as much as possible. But
that's not my primary motivation for
>> a lifestyle coach, are you?
>> Yeah, like in terms of looking Yeah, in
terms of looking into it, it's
But I would say that if you were trying
to glean something practical from this,
don't I wouldn't take the kind of
caveman like, oh high body count bad,
low body count good approach or or you
know, a cavewoman as well
because these these preferences are
apparently very similar.
I would end these outcomes as well.
I would say, okay, well I've got this
piece of information, but what's the
context of that number? Like is this a
person like if you want long-term
healthy monogamy, is this a person who
has had five long-term relationships?
Because that might even be like a green
flag. If you're like 30 and they've
they've had a few
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That that sounds pretty good.
If you're an undergrad and you met
someone and the number's five and it's
all one-night stands and all that.
>> Yeah,
that's such a good point. If you were to
do a third iteration of Thomas's study
and say were these in a committed
relationship that lasted for longer than
6 months or were these one-offs? Yeah.
Well, Completely different story.
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