Life Advice From The Doctor

In a recent post I wondered when it’ time to quit something that no longer gives you as much happiness as before. There was a gem of a comment by Dr. Jeremy from the magazine Psychology Today:

There is often some black-and-white thinking that tends to keep men chasing the diminishing returns of additional notches. With some exceptions, the manosphere primarily offers two choices to men, 1) stay single and collect notches in ONSs and STRs, or 2) “brave” getting married and game your wife to get sex and avoid divorce. Given those two choices only, many men stay free, single, and notch-collecting.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of options in between that are not as routinely or loudly discussed. Men have MLTRs concurrently, they build harems, they have open relationships, they date bisexual women who enjoy threesomes, polyamory, etc. All of these options give men the ability to build relationships in new areas with greater returns – while not having to completely “give up” the option of additional partners. They can shift some of their energy in a new direction, without completely trading one lifestyle’s benefits for another.

Like learning any “game”, this does initially take more work (although the new challenge can be fun too). Over time, however, having a steady relationship (or several) can help a man meet his sexual needs with less effort than finding a new ONS whenever he has an itch to scratch. This can free a guy up from diminishing returns and allow more time for success in other areas of life. Then again, if/when he does really want something new, he still has the ability to get it – without having to “throw away” his existing relationship(s) in the process.

Perhaps, instead of chasing notches then, you might find collecting LTRs in some fashion more appealing for awhile? Then you can decide whether you want to go back to notch collecting, eventually go the loving, family patriarch gamer road with a wife (perhaps in a foreign country), or the Hugh Hefner route and grow old with a revolving harem!

Not bad. A mistake that people often make is acting out the extremes when their min is sending them unhappiness signals. Instead of making a drastic change, why not try a couple small tweaks instead?

Read More: The Attraction Doctor