Growing indifference to relationships and sex in Japan | Hacker News Reader

Growing indifference to relationships and sex in Japan

nippon.com

46 pointsz7116 comments

The thing that always messed me up with relationships in school in Japan is how the class / larger social group would perceive it. There's definitely relationships I didn't pursue because I didn't want to disrupt the harmony of the group as it were. So dating out of group is easier in a way.

I wasn't over there until university, but I think it might be even worse for the younger kids. Everyone is in everyone else's business and no one wants to be the object of gossip or ridicule.

Are dating apps not prevalent there? A major novelty of dating apps is that it allows you to meet people that are completely removed from your social circle, which sounds like it would be pretty useful in Japan.

Dating apps have the same issues worldwide as they do in the US. And we have no end of laments regarding OLD in the US.

what?

I reckon the initialism is "On Line Dating"

Dating apps have issues, sure, but those issues have not even come close to stopping people from using them. Dating apps are ubiquitous among those in their early 20s here.

It’s because it provides false hope. Many people can tell you about the hours wasted on the apps.

Craziest stat imo is that 80% of 18-19 year olds have 0 sexual experience. Here I was thinking that only constants in life were death, taxes, and horny teenagers, but the japanese have apparently broken teenagers.

That's hardly a crazy stat, you're merely viewing it through a Western lens. In plenty of Asian cultures it is uncommon for people to have sexual experience before marriage.

Not necessarily western, dating an American girl can be quite special. Not only meant negatively, but it is something else. Different focus, different interests,...

Inexperienced does not mean not horny.

Sure, but it definitely means something is stopping them.

It is extremely common in many parts of Asia not to have sex in your teens or even before marriage for variety of reasons

Who among them has the time? You're dealing with 12 hours of school every day, 2 hours on transit, and 8 hours of sleep, 6 days a week. I guess it gets better later on, since while you then have 14 hours of work, that's only 5 days a week, so you get another day off, and that's your relationship day (by Japanese society's revealed preferences).

It's honestly a wonder that Japanese society even manages the 1.3 children per family it currently does.

Did you know birth control only accounts for around 1% of the estrogens in our drinking water? Wanna know why water filters and bottled water is so important?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogen are the most common which comes from soy primarily. Soy sauce, tofu, miso. All popular in japan.

Virtually nothing plastic is BPA free: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosulfan on many vegetables and fruits you eat. Be sure to wash off your fruits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrazine used in all kinds of applications all over the world.

What would it look like if we effectively were giving society a large dose of hormone replacement therapy all the time?

You say that as if 18 year olds having sexual experience 1) is good and 2) is normal. I would contest both of those points from a perspective outside of contemporary Western values.

I suspect Japan is just a few years ahead of North America. Everyone keeps saying how this is a uniquely Japanese thing, but

Anecdotally, in my own broader social group, of 15 or so people there are 3 relationships that exist. Far more (myself included) have never had a relationship (about 8).

If you account for different cultures and only look at 3rd gen immigrants and beyond, you're likely already there.

???

Over half of American teens have had sex by 18, compared to under 20% in Japan. I've seen nothing to suggest that that is going to change dramatically.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2017/...

It's already happening in the US, we just don't notice it as much because we still allow enough immigration to maintain a net population growth.

The cure is to stop educating people. There is a proven causal link between education and birth rates. It turns out that when people are both smarter and have more opportunity available to them, they are more likely to choose life paths other than staying home and raising kids.

Or, take a different view like me. I don't think declining birth rates are a problem, I think continuing to hinge our economy on continual unsustainable exponential growth is.

Men are treated poorly and checking out. Its demoralizing when you hear 6 feet 6 figures 6 inches from so many women on dating apps.

Its demoralizing to be cheated on and be blamed for all the ills.

It feels bad when Twitter users post kill all men.

The humanity must find a way to understand what is driving demographic decline around the world.

The liberal paradigm is to attribute this to financially squeezed young people who cannot buy homes and start families. I'm sure this does have some effect, but clearly it's a severely lacking explanation as people who are poorer and have gone through extreme hardship prioritize family and having children far more regardless of their financial status.

There seems to be something much more fundamental happening to civilizations around the world where it is annihilating itself peacefully. This must become the primary objective of countries around the world to figure out. Immigration will buys you time, but it won't solve the problem.

We’re seeing the first generation who are worse off than their parents. The future looks bleak with climate change and multiple conflicts around the world.

Not true. You are probably looking at last 70 to 80 years. Look back several millennia. Our generation is better off than 99% every generation before us. Climate change, multiple conflicts around the world are no where near a big problem compared to the struggles our ancestors have gone through.

I think this is wrong.

Silent Gen and Boomers lived in an unusual boom time that hasn't existed before or since. America was the world's factory and everyone else was out of commission. We had it all, and that'll never happen again. Now we're reverting to the mean, and it'll be okay. We still have great wealth.

Just look to the developing nation algorithm. Our wealth is being spent on bringing up other economies (giving us cheap stuff in exchange). That's not a bad thing.

People aren't having sex (or children) because of Internet, TV, porn, social media, modern work habits, etc. You can't unplug from it.

Furthermore, raising kids used to give you an extra farmhand or house cleaner. Now it gives you an expensive equivalent of a dog. Plenty of folks don't want the trouble.

The drop in European and Japanese birthrates predates the modern internet, does it not?

The massive drop across the globe was in the 70s, in practically every developed country.

But is demographic decline that bad? It doesn't seem like this is catastrophic (yet?). Makes me wonder...

Most social services function something like a pyramid scheme. You need more people paying in than taking out.

There are ways to tweak the balance a bit, almost all of which have to do with finding efficiencies that reduce administrative costs- replacing in person visits with doctors with video calls to nurses, moving manual-process-intensive paperwork to less-manual-intensive electronic billing, that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, there's only just so much you can do when a greater percentage of the population is drawing on benefits and not working than there are people working and paying taxes. If the balance swings too far, something has to give- rationing access by adjusting age limits, declining certain types of care, reducing benefits, that sort of thing.

Sure, but making people take social security at 75 instead of 65 or whatever is hardly the civilization annihilation event the person upthread was describing.

We need to be doing that and we are at stable population thanks to immigration.

Russia and Japan are among the countries facing a much more catastrophic demographics "time bomb".

Every western country is taking in mass migration to try and push it back somewhat.

The numbers are extremely counter-intuitive because we live far longer than we're fertile. Imagine we have a society that starts with 100 newborns with a fertility rate of 1, in a world where everybody gives birth at 20 and dies at 80. To make this 'sim' slightly more realistic, I'm also going to add in some filler population in year 0 with the assumption of a 6 fertility rate. Incidentally this is exactly the case for South Korea which went from greater than 6 to less than 1 in an incredibly brief period of time:

---

(148) Year 0: 4 sixties, 11 forties, 33 twenties, 100 newborns <=== last year of 6 fertility rate, ~3:1 youth:elder generation ratio

(194) Year 20: 11 sixties, 33 forties, 100 twenties, 50 newborns <=== start of 1 fertility rate

(208) Year 40: 33 sixties, 100 forties, 50 twenties, 25 newborns

(187) Year 60: 100 sixties, 50 forties, 25 twenties, 12 newborns <==== last high fertility elder dies, start of new 1:2 youth:elder generation ratio

(93) Year 80: 50 sixties, 25 forties, 12 twenties, 6 newborns

(46) Year 100: 25 sixties, 12 forties, 6 twenties, 3 newborns

(23) Year 120: 12 sixties, 6 forties, 3 twenties, 1 newborn

---

In spite of having an extinction level fertility rate, everything just seems perfectly peachy at first. The initial population is even seeing some very healthy increases over decades. As the high fertility group starts to die the growth sputters, but it seems less than catastrophic. But then when the generation that's failed to replace itself starts dying, it's like a bomb goes off. Suddenly the population is getting chopped in half every 20 years to say nothing of a large elder population now being supported by a smaller than ever youth population.

In South Korea (and most of the world, including the US) the key initial inflection is between 1960 and 1980 where they went from greater than 6, to less than 2 fertility, which is now less than 1. So their 'great dying' event will start sometime around 2060. So far away, yet also so predictable - and with 0 doubt of its certainty unless something changes dramatically now. And that seems unlikely.

> it's a severely lacking explanation as people who are poorer and have gone through extreme hardship prioritize family and having children far more regardless of their financial status

I think that's possibly attributable to people in lower socioeconomic conditions reacting to economic pressures in different ways from those in the middle class. Meaning, those from middle class, white collar professional, college-educated families are more driven to try to preserve the status and conditions they already have, and would optimize decisions based on that. So rather than risk financial hardship and becoming working class, they choose to optimize for education, career, financial stability, and delay starting families.

This is the first generation with hormonal additives and steroids or pesticidal chemicals in virtually everything we eat. Testosterone levels accross the board are dropping, at least.

Maybe we should stop assuming that buying a home or getting married are huge contributors to sex.

And then just ask.

Don't ask them if they want to pursue your expectations. Ask them what they want.

And if you ask young Japanese women, they respond that economic factors, such as the cost of raising a child, work–family conflicts, and insufficient housing, are the most common reasons for not having as many children as desired. Maybe it is this simple/fundamental. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_Japan#Marriage_and...

Yes, but that's answering why they don't have as many children, not why they aren't having sex.

It's also only asking women who already have one or more children.

It tells us nothing about why so many people are not having sex.

Still living in your parents’ house is something of a barrier to sex.

> people who are poorer and have gone through extreme hardship prioritize family and having children far more regardless of their financial status

Yep, nailed it. It's an expectations/reality gap for the developed world. Any of these people can physically have children, raise them in their financially hobbled state, and still provide more comfort on average than the majority of the families in the developing world. The difference is that in the developed world people are delaying or canceling their plans because their expectations of what parenthood should look like is radically different from what they believe they can afford.

Maybe you won't be able to send your kids to private school, or pay for their full ride to private university, or the best daycare, or live in the perfect house you grew up thinking you deserved. But you can afford to have a family. You just can't afford to do it with all of your requirements.

This is part of it. I think the rise in fertility options plays a part here as well—many people are choosing to start families later in life than was realistic or possible 20 years prior. This has been a well observed trend that has been going strong since the 1980s.

If you're female and want to pursue a career, you can now do that and wait until later in life to have a family. Wasn't long ago where that choice was binary.

> You just can't afford to do it with all of your requirements.

Yes, and as I mention upthread, to drop those requirements is essentially telling middle class youth that they have to accept a regression in living standards compared to their parents', which runs counter to the messaging they were raised on. Not only parental/cultural expectations but the developed world middle class suburban ethos of "work hard and you'll live a good life", the whole post-Cold War End of History that humanity was supposedly marching towards.

Annihilating? Please. Humanity grew an order of magnitude in about 300 years, and is currently hitting planetary limits. Now, the growth is slowing down, but not even in reverse yet. How can a reduction of an overblown population be equated to annihilation?

No. We're fine with half the number of people on this planet. Traffic sucks. Fix traffic instead.

Go anywhere in the populated 99.9% of the world where traffic in your densely populated urban layout of choice is a non-problem and reconsider the death of multiple billion people as a solution.

Now fix pollution.

Civilizations cone and go.

Humanity will be fine.

Link to survey (Japanese only) / press release:

https://www.ipss.go.jp/ps-doukou/e/doukou16/Nfs16_gaiyoEng.h...

I like to think about "Questions nobody wants honest answers to." So here is one, and you can perform an experiment: Go to some kind of forum, maybe Reddit or Quora or Metafilter (just kidding don't do Metafilter unless you are a masochist) and ask the question, "Where can I, as a single hetero male, go to approach women?"

My prediction is that you'll get some "OMG DON'T!" responses, and a lot of "where NOT to," which does not answer the actual question. For there to be relationships and/or sex, somebody has to make the approach, and that means a location in spacetime, a where and a when.

The workplace, previously one of the largest places where this occurred, has been ruled out, which is a bit troublesome given that most people spend a rather large percentage of their time there. Oh, we kinda stopped going to church, so that is out. Bowling alone ... uh ... then maybe you ask about the library and someone will say "I'm just there to study" or a bar and it becomes "I'm just there to hang out with my friends." Always in the negative.

Where are these approaches to take place? Have we collectively decided to hand this over to match.com, Tinder, Grindr, whatever, and now it is all online?

If relationships and sex were food and water, there's chunk of people who would expect you to politely starve to death and not make a lot of noise about it.

>Where can I, as a single hetero male, go to approach women

https://www.reddit.com/r/socialskills/comments/vw4cw1/places...

https://www.reddit.com/r/dating/comments/t4il6w/what_are_the...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/jtii14/women_of_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/dating_advice/comments/ipdr0k/is_th...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskWomen/comments/sn08h/ladies_when...

https://www.reddit.com/r/dating/comments/v1nqha/should_men_s...

On a personal note I have 3 sisters and I've always heard from them (and their friends) that a lot of women actually disappointed that men doesn't approach them irl. It's a 2 way game for sure but generally men expected to take the first step for sure.

But on the other hand there is also a social pressure to "not fuck up", everything is online nowadays and pretty much kept forever. No one wants to be labeled as a creep or such. So a lot of men just choose to not play the game, why risk to lose when you barely have any chance to win at all?

One thing I want to add that online people always say is “join a hobby group”, but most hobbies that young people actually want to do are extremely skewed to one gender. Think yoga vs kickboxing.

I did meetup.com for a few years, and the non-tech groups I joined were basically all 20-something single guys and 40-plus divorced women. Looking back it’s no surprise I gave up on it.

I had the best time joining something that was like a Rotary Club but they let in anyone who was willing to pay dues. I guess joining something with long term projects and monthly board meetings provides at least some slight potential to get to know someone who happens to be single.

Is yoga really skewed? And fitness classes alone have tons of varieties that are popular among both genders- spin class, Crossfit, BodyPump, and so on.

I walk by both a kickboxing gym and a yoga studio regularly. Classes appear to be probably 60/40 at most one way or the other. Of course, these are just 2 data points...

When I dabbled in yoga I always saw a ratio of like 15 women to 3 men. Of course those were beginner classes, and I’m sure things could be different in high level classes and online yoga forums.

Fitness classes aren’t really set up to be social, everyone shows up right before it starts, does their 30-40 minutes of exercise with loud music playing, then everyone goes home.

Probably better to join a coed sports league with a group of your friends.

> Fitness classes aren’t really set up to be social

Sure, but I don't see how yoga or kickboxing is much different.

I've known at least one marriage met through coed sports. Agreed that's an activity with more interaction.

Asking this question on the internet is an interesting experiment, but it's not going to give you an accurate depiction of real life.

You can still ask people out at bars or even grocery stores, etc. The key is to strike up a conversation and not be so intent on asking someone out. If there's some chemistry, then maybe you ask them out. If you get rejected, take it in stride.

If you go in with the singular goal of getting a date or hooking up, there's a good chance that you'll come across as desperate and end up disappointed, but if you go in thinking about having fun and making friends, that can open new doors.

I think the question is simply wrong. If there was such a place as an easy answer, it would soon be full of men seeking women. The answer thus is basically: everywhere where you're confident to make a connection with the opposite sex without making it awkward. I.e., learn to make yourself attractive and flirt.

MeFi is really not as unsympathetic to straight dudes as you think it is

https://ask.metafilter.com/357569/Beyond-dating-apps-how-to-...

https://ask.metafilter.com/355041/Mid-30s-app-dating-post-CO...

https://ask.metafilter.com/305919/I-dont-think-that-online-d...

This is a very strange comment - the modern world is historically friendly to a single man approaching women. In fact prior to online dating, a lot of people would've pointed this out as a reason as to why dating is harder in the modern world, because people have too many choices. The same complaint that people have about online dating applies more generally to any situation where it's relatively easy for single men to approach women.

Historically, romantic relationships didn't rely on these cold approaches because a lot of people met their partners by introduction and/or through the romantic relationship evolving from acquaintance/friendship.

>The results show that around half of men and women aged 18 and 19 have never been in a relationship, while the percentage is around 30% for women aged 20 to 34 and nearly 40% for men of the same age bracket

This is just absolutely astounding to me. HALF of all 18-19 year olds have NEVER been in a relationship?! Are norms around what constitutes a 'relationship' different in Japan than the US? Because that figure seems shockingly high.

That was my high school in Canada too. 4 people had dates for graduation. Granted, we were a tech school.

Sounds about right for zoomers

Maybe zoomers on this website.

Tech, including porn, social media, gaming, deluge of escapism video on demand, is just another kind of drug, conditioning everyone to get dopamine hits by pressing buttons rather than bonding with other human beings. I am not saying quit cold turkey, just know that there is a difference between junk food and a meal that is good for you long term. One contributing problem is stigmatizing normal male sexuality to the point men have to completely repress themselves to fit in. One can be a gentleman and still want and pursue physical relationships.

Normal, healthy views on it aren't what's stigmatized. Creepy, unrequited, harassing behaviour sometimes is, in some contexts, and its practitioners love to fall back to the 'Just being nice/don't you like the attention/just boys being boys' defenses when called out on it.

The people responsible for it, of course, see themselves as victims, and cry to anyone who will listen about how unfair the world is to them.

Nature inclines women to require quite a bit of effort and persistence to be won over, since they make so much investment and require so much help to birth and raise children. There is an intricate set of social norms, developed over centuries, that protects women from over-aggressive suitors while still allowing appropriate courtship to happen. Such courtship necessarily takes place where men and women naturally congregate together, including school and work and includes playful compliments and asking someone out a few times. Young women are naturally attracted to older successful men as good providers, just like as young men often initially go out with older women who are either past childbearing years or have their own practical and emotional resources rather than placing a big burden on their partners. There are reasons to prefer equal/same age relationships, but we shouldn't clutch our pearls when a boss dates a secretary. You can't just throw away hundreds of years of tradition and expect good results from counterfactual expectations on gender that you dreamed up from thin air. Just look at what happened with 20th century efforts to rewrite human nature by decree. Personally I am not in the market and not talking for myself, just feel sorry for the future of humanity. Especially progressive environmentalists got to realize that childless old people grow conservative and don't give a hoot about climate change after they are gone.

And my nature as a man inclines me to burn pop-evolutionary-psychology takes, because it is natural for me to like fire, because fire was integral to my evolutionary survival, and burning garbage feeds the fire, and is therefore perfectly natural.

You're parading a collection of nonsense just-so-stories dressed up in a lab coat, and the beauty of them is that you can cherry-pick whatever narrative fits your pre-conceptions. That is, of course, also why they are utter rubbish, and not worth the paper they are printed on.

Are you saying something that isn't built on a quicksand of naturalistic fallacies? What exactly is it?

> but we shouldn't clutch our pearls when a boss dates a secretary

Right, because quid-pro-quo relationships, or even the appearance of quid-pro-quo relationships are fantastic for the workplace! Isn't it great for everyone else to see Sally get a raise after she starts fucking the boss? There's no conflict of interest, potential for abuse of power, or problem for anyone else involved!

Are there any other naturalistic practices we should normalize again in the workplace? Maybe kickbacks and bribes? Do we need a few just-so-stories to justify these practices, or can we forego that exercise in creative writing, and skip straight to the conclusions I want?

That's another weird thing about today's progressives, literally putting workplace before family - aren't you guys supposed to be socialists? The alternative is for Sally, her boss and their coworkers to accept that romance can be impractical, inconvenient and embarrassing. But, if there is any chance at all that two people can find lasting happiness, a slim chance that I would have gotten that raise instead is a distant secondary priority. I will just insist on what I think I deserve and not obsess about others. Or if someone grants sexual favors for actual or perceived career benefit, it's on them to measure their self worth in this way. Or if the boss is willing to forego a sweetheart to avoid some office gossip and jealousy...

Unless we're living in a Star Trek post-scarcity utopia, everyone needs to work for a living. Including all the people affected by this.

You want to have a sexual relationship with your report? There's a very simple, professional, solution for you, which is to do as you advise - 'prioritize family over work', and have one of you move jobs so that you aren't ruining it for everyone else. There are more people in society than the two of you, and they are negatively affected by quid-pro-quo behaviour, or the appearance of quid-pro-quo behaviour.

LOL, like people who don't know where their next meal is coming from are the ones obsessing about who is hooking up with whom. Also what if my boss has a close friend? Cousin? Army/gym/golf buddy? Guess I will keep going around sticking my nose in other people's personal lives while humanity is going extinct in demographic collapse, because cleary everything being absolutely fair and equal to me down to microscopic level and nobody liking anybody a bit more than others is the most important thing in the world.

"There are reasons to prefer equal/same age relationships, but we shouldn't clutch our pearls when a boss dates a secretary"

Boss A dumps his menopausal spouse and dates a young secretary. An evolutionary psychiatrist says "He evolved to do that! Dating a younger woman increases his reproductive opportunity."

Meanwhile, Boss B stays faithful to his wife. An Evolutionary psychiatrist says "he evolved to do that! Women increase their reproductive success by looking for mates that are monogomous, because monogomous mates will stick around and keep their children safe, so men evolved to exhibit monogomy so as to be chosen by women for reproductive opportunities"

Boss C would rather not date and has no kids. Evolutionary psychiatrist "He evolved to do this! Or rather specifically, he evolved to run around in the evolutionary environment prowling for mates, so since he's not in that environment but a modern city it's not surprising he doesn't want kids or sex, his genes were only selected to date and mate in the evolutionary environment."

So basically these explanations are about as scientific as saying "God did it" over and over, since there is no way to prove or disprove them as the claims is tailored to any conceivable fact pattern.

So people should be wary of the line of reasoning you presented in your post, since whatever it is it isn't scientific.

People used to have no problem reproducing whatsoever and now they do. Can't blame birth control because they are not even doing it in the first place. Looking at newly emerged obstacles to dating is a valid scientific hypothesis. Got a better one?

There is nothing valid or scientific about an undisprovable just-so story, which is what 95% of evo-psych is. The other 5% doesn't make claims that are very useful in internet arguments.

Hypothesis is defined as " a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation."

Also am I to understand that you will be conducting an experiment as to whether or not we should clutch our pearls when a boss dates a secretary? And you have little evidence in support of this notion at the present time, you were proposing it to begin your investigation?

As for people having no trouble reproducing, well... lots of people had lots of trouble reproducing. Evolution doesn't work if everyone reproduces. There pretty much has to be a whole lot of people not reproducing for natural selection to "select" the ones who will be reproducing.

I think you really mean people in recent years had no trouble reproducing but I'm being pendantic and just wanted to push back a little on the idea we should expect everyone to reproduce.

I already gave you one evolutionary psychiatrist's vague proposal for why we should have trouble reproducing: we no longer live in the evolutionary environment, so it wouldn't be unexpected to see us not acting like our ancestors.

It's vague enough that it isn't obviously wrong, or obviously made up by someone trying to sell you something.

While "we shouldn't clutch our pearls when a boss dates a secretary" sounds suspiciously like what someone would say who is trying to sell us something

I don't believe you have such a motivation, but I recall watching a lecture where the professor was saying how all the old evolutionary psychiatrist professors were divorcing their wives to hook up with young women half their age. They were clearly inventing a justification for their behavior, or drawn to that field because of their personal oddities.

"One contributing problem is stigmatizing normal male sexuality to the point men have to completely repress themselves to fit in."

I bet you didn't know 70% of marriages in japan used to be arranged marriages. Now much less than 10% are.

Really demonstrates how "normal male sexuality" is culturally bound, not whatever you are picturing.

Yes, in societies invested in arranged marriage disrupting that system rapidly is going to have a huge detrimental effect. Just like dismantling long standing etiquette of courting and flirting in Western society has a huge detrimental effect. None of this implies that anyone should be forced into anything by suitors or parents or that Westerners can't have arranged marriages / Japanese can't flirt. But cultures and institutions don't just spring up overnight so we have to protect ones that have been working.

Considering Japanese culture, I'm not surprised. This is what happens when you have super-conservative social values backed up by a strong pressure to conform. Few people are willing to take a risk or convey honest feelings, and both of those things are inherent in a romantic relationship.

Wouldn’t strong pressure to confirm mean just finding someone to be in a relationship with even if not happy ?

Wouldn’t there be social pressure just as strong or stronger to be married/in a relationship?

Two questions:

1. Does this survey include or correct for homosexuals?

2. How correct is it to say there is a "growing indifference" when the levels seem to mostly be approaching their value in the 1980s-90s?

I hate the way people say "relationship" as if it's a singular data point. Sex is a relationship. Business is a relationship. Friendship is a relationship. Romance is a relationship. Treating several days points as one data point gives us really poor data.

Thankfully, a lot of the data in the article is explicitly about "sexual experience". Even so, there is still the loaded question, "Do you want a relationship?" That's just too vague. How can we learn what people's goals are if we aren't willing to ask?

All we know boils down to two data points: fewer people are pursuing traditional marriage, and fewer people are having sex.

That's not enough to answer the interesting questions. We can't learn what obstacles people have if we don't know their goals.

Is there really much ambiguity about what is meant by "relationship" as part of the phrase "relationships and sex"? I think it's pretty obvious it means an exclusive romantic relationship or something approximately along those lines, and not a business partnership.

Yes, but an exclusive romantic relationship is not the only context people have sex.

Romance itself is not sex, nor sex romance. Just because that's historically been a very popular and socially accepted method does not mean it is today.

The entire purpose of doing studies like this is to learn something new. The more assumptions we make, the fewer opportunities we have to learn.

The study is carried out by the National Fertility Survey. Declining fertility rates drive immense problems in societies, and Japan is at the forefront of this because of both their age and fertility rates.

Relationships are important on a micro scale. Fertility is absolutely critical on a macro scale.

Marriage is not where babies come from.

The data in this article asks people if they have had sex, then in an effort to figure out why not, asks if they want a relationship.

>How can we learn what people's goals are if we aren't willing to ask?

Place it in context of the culture. One that hammers the importance of family and community. Where every year, without fail, on Christmas Eve and Valentine's, tons of individuals lament being alone or being asked by parents when their child will find someone.

The goals are pretty on the nose. Of course, you're more likely to find them in the far less academic women's magazines and whatever manga incorporates romantically.

I can tell you all about living in a culture with strong expectations around marriage and bearing children. It's not as consistent a driver of behavior as you might expect.

There are more reasons to have sex than making babies. There are more reasons to get married than sex.

The average person's relationship goals may be shifting drastically away from conservative marriage. We would be wise to accommodate that possibility in our data collecting methods.

RTFA. The article explicitly defines what is meant by relationship, and their definition includes friendship with the opposite gender.

> and their definition includes friendship with the opposite gender.

So the data is definitely ambiguous. That's my entire point.

On top of that, my complaint is directed much more broadly than this article. As I mentioned before, this particular article did provide some data explicitly about sexual relationships. That's really great. Most studies don't.

„Do you want a relationship (friendship or dating) with someone of the opposite sex?“ is not ambiguous. Stop ranting.

Personally I find people who don’t read the (short) article and go on a long strawman rant more problematic than what you complain about.

1. I did read the article. I simply wasn't interested in arguing with you about its contents to prove I had.

2. The article was taking about some specific data points and some vague data points. The ambiguity I am referring to is in the data provided by a vague question's answers. Asking if people want to be in a relationship does not tell us clearly and unambiguously what kind of relationship they are interested in.

3. The article is treated as a topic for discussion here. I'm allowed to expand discussion to other closely related information. Taking about a general trend that applies to all relationship studies, when the topic is a relationship study, is not a strawman or way off topic. You are just gatekeeping conversation.

I wonder if this is environment driven where maybe there is some kind of chemical gotten into their food chain that inhibits the libido.

I could easily see it being that we are otherwise happy, making sex less worth the effort to obtain. Or porn. If I have a sexual itch, I just go to porn.

I am someone who in my mid 20s has never had a relationship. Not worth the effort to me.

Most people get more out of a relationship than sex.

I think most people don't internalize that fact until the emotional shock of their first big breakup.

But with today's fluid relationship types - a classical couple relationship isn't needed as much, isn't it?

And on top of that, a lot of problems that were before solved by having a partner (something breaking, don't know how to cook, just lonely and want to chat, etc) now can be solved by various businesses and services.

I think that it's possible that for some people classical relationships aren't as optimal anymore.

I think a lot of people are desperately unhappy and lonely and a classical relationship (either sexual, or simply close friendship) is exactly what is missing from their lives, and all the businesses and services that try to fill this gap aren’t cutting it.

They aren't trying to fill the gap. Filling the gap would make the profits dry up.

Not if you fill it with a service rather than durable goods.

They get the purchasing power to afford a mortgage.

Not just that , Sometimes you get much less sex than not being in a relationship. Quality of sex can drop as well.

I expect most people get more out of sex than sexual stimulation and orgasms.

For one thing, there's the validation that someone is interested in having sex with you in the first place.

Fair. I have been told this before but keep forgetting.

how do you know its not worth the effort if you've never had it?

Not OP or in same situation.

Your line of questioning is not useful and is perhaps okay to use on 5year old child to eat broccoli.

I can use same argument you make for drugs or mass murders or anything else .

the rational way to evaluate an activity is the perceived value , effort needed and our desire to do it.

There could be informed discussion on why the perceived value is so low or natural desire is not strong, but arguing try it once is not helpful.

>but arguing try it once is not helpful

Why not? If you want to get a better idea of how much you'd value an experience, doing it seems like a pretty good idea, and this certainly falls more towards the eating broccoli end of the spectrum of moral reprehensibility and likelihood of ruining your life than taking up recreational murder or heroin.

I suppose I do not, in the same way that I do not know whether learning the Ukulele will change my life. But that is not strong motivation to do either.

I felt the exact same way until I hit 30. Now I feel so utterly alone and all I want is to have a family to care for. Most people can only deny their genetic programming for so long.

Seems impossible and makes no sense.

Why is it impossible for something to get into the food chain for a large number of people? You've got loads of spraying, processing and packaging going on in the industrial food chain. Even if you have myriad producers, ruling out an issue due to centralization of processing, they might all be wrapping their product in the same materials.

It's conspiracy theory that simple point in time causes have widespread diffuse effects. Imagining there is "something in the water" is paranoia

There, in fact, is something in the water. One substance is a known neurotoxin used to treat tooth decay, but statistically seen to decrease IQ. You can call it paranoia, but that makes you more out of touch with reality while you quash viable, accurate discourse. Japan's culture already predisposes its citizens to more estrogenics than the US consumer sees... but go on, let's have another few decades of indoctrinated ignorance because you cannot be honest and accurate about reality. Don't attribute to paranoia your own distinct lack of thought about extant phenomenea. If an effect exists, causes exist which far outweigh your inability to measure them distinctly.

I like how instead of expanding on your idea, you use weasel-wording and spend more time attacking GP. That makes you more trustworthy.

Sure, but there's a difference between "impossible" and "not supported by current evidence".

As another poster points out, there is an example with flouride (though I am no anti-flouridist). Other examples might be widespread use of BPA and PFAS. Air-pollution might be another example of something that could effect much of a population (though it's not in the food chain).

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and until we have strong scientific evidence I won't claim that there are population-wide effects.

But saying it's "impossible" is wrong.

OP here, I think I might have been blacklisted. Seems like this isn't turning up anywhere on the main pages despite the upvotes. Maybe because I tried to submit the Kiwi Farms url where the recent hack was documented. Anyway, thanks for the comments.

edit: Okay, now it's on page one. xD

It's 34th on front page 2 right now.

You're 28th on the front page with 10 upvotes, so I doubt it

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