When Taking the L is Winning

This is why you never, ever, listen to Gammas

Some whey-faced Gamma male advises men to leap into relationships without ever bothering to discover what is in store for them.

In my opinion, rooting around in a woman’s sexual history is actually a bad idea. And it’s a bad idea for many reasons. First and foremost, reviewing a woman’s sexual history suffers from the same liability as most forms of assessment. Namely, absence of evidence is not evidence of an absence. A cancer screening, for example, cannot give you positive evidence that you are cancer-free. It can just fail to detect the existence of any cancer, which is not the same thing

By the same token, failing to discover anything concerning in a woman’s sexual past doesn’t prove that no such experiences exist. You just might not have found them. This could reflect a true absence of evidence, but it could also indicate that you didn’t ask the right questions or that she’s good at hiding, lying, and/or destroying evidence. And of course, anything that you do find won’t be reassuring, my dude. Like a cancer screening can only give you bad news when it finds something, right?

So men who are highly concerned with a woman’s body count, I have to ask, why do you do this to yourselves? You literally can only find things that would disqualify a woman and potentially inflame your retroactive jealousy.

First, note the insane illogic here. To utilize his metaphor, you should never get yourself screened for cancer, because then you might find it. And even if you don’t find it, it’s possible that you might have it anyhow.

The rational man would point out that a failed cancer screening won’t leave the cancer victim any worse off than if he didn’t get the test, while if the test works, then he can get the cancer treated.

Second, women are not cancer. The whole point of paying attention to a woman’s personal history, which includes but is not limited to her sexual history, is to disqualify the woman if she looks like a bad bet! It’s not a perfect heuristic, but the fact is that the most reliable predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

I’m going to assume that this guy is not a gambler or a game designer, because he appears to have absolutely no idea that the concept of probability even exists. Statistics very clearly demonstrate that women fall into three behavioral categories based on their sexual experience prior to marriage.

• 0-1

• 2-14

• 15+

There are finer gradations in the statistics, but there are three statistically significant plateaus. By the time you hit the top level, your probability of divorce is maxed out. A woman in the first category is 4.2 times more likely to be married and 2.6 times less likely to be divorced than a woman in the third category.

In other words, body count is a very reasonable and statistically relevant metric for future female relationship stability. This isn’t just science, this isn’t psychology, this is math, which is far more reliable than either.

We now come to my second argument. It’s not a good idea to root around in her sexual past because you will never, ever, ever know the truth. Even if the woman is swearing up and down that she’s telling you the truth, she’s not, and she shouldn’t because nothing good can come from telling the truth here.

Now, it’s true that women so reliably lie about their sexual histories that the assumption should always be that unless she is claiming not to have one at all, she’s lying about it. I’ve witnessed too many women lying to others, and caught too many out in their lies to me, to ever assume a woman is telling the truth about the subject. And the guy is quite right to point out that women have every reason to lie, as their economic well-being, their relationship prospects, and even their personal safety can depend on hiding the truth from men.

But the reality is that women are very, very bad liars on this particular subject. Remember, they have no empathy, so their natural tendency is to try to impress a man in the same way they are impressed, which is to point out that other men before you have been attracted to them. A sympathetic ear, a straight face, and a non-judgmental tone is usually all it takes to convince a woman to provide a comprehensive catalog of every man who ever told her she was cute, beginning with seventh grade.

Frankly, once they get rolling, it’s hard to make them stop even when you don’t really want to hear anymore.

Furthermore, her friends will usually provide you with more than enough clues that something is up. Women are not exactly known for their loyalty in this regard. If you simply pay attention to the way a woman’s friends will casually mention a man’s name or “that time in Chicago” and notice the way she shoots ocular death threats at them, you know perfectly well that where there’s smoke and ashes, there was fire. Anyone who lies habitually or instinctively about anything finds it nearly impossible to keep their past stories straight over time, so if you have even a modicum of a memory, the anomalies will stack up soon enough no matter how dedicated to hiding the truth she is.

Now, all that being said, I very much part company with those who insist that unless their prospective girlfriend has been living in a remote nunnery and never spoken with a man between the ages of 15 and 75 before, she is unclean and unworthy of holy matrimony. Probability is not certainty, and perhaps you’re not a flawless, top-drawer man yourself. Or maybe you’re a reformed high-status player and 15 strikes you as an average summer and something akin to a rounding error.

The point is that body count is merely one of many potential red flags and it is far from the most serious. About one in five women has been on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and I would absolutely bet on an over-enthusiastic party girl, high-class escort, or even an OnlyFans whore before I’d even think about dating a drug-addled depressive. It does matter, and it should be taken seriously, but it is also not the only factor to take into account when contemplating a prospective relationship with a woman.