So people who find their sex lives so supremely important enough to go way out of their way (compared to the average) to organize their lives managing complex sexual relationships "self report" their sex is awesome? Really. I'm shocked.

Studies that rely on 'self reporting" always need to be taken with huge helping of salt.

And studies about a self-esteem subject with which people have their whole identities wrapped up in need to be side-eyed pretty hard. Not sure how else you measure something like "better sex" but self reporting.

But, you know. C'mon. If I self report on my own experience with "swingers," my anecdotal evidence is they all "say" how awesome it is, and how you should totally get with them, but by outside observation they are a pretty creepy and chronically dissatisfied bunch of douche bags. But. That's my narrow bandwidth of self reporting.

Another example? American gun owners self report how much more safe guns make them and how many crimes they have prevented with their guns. But objective external data doesn't support this.

Another. "Studies" on teenage sex always self report... like, how many chicks they have bagged and how hot they are, like so much hotter than the chicks in this high school... but, you know, they live in Canada so you don't know them.

I have to agree with Dr.Zaius. As someone that's been involved in CNM LTRs in the past, I found myself going all sorts of confirmation-bias crazy just reading through this post, both positively and negatively.

Katie,
I just finished "Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage and Monogamy" by Mark Regnerus (2017). It's an excellent sociological account of how sex has become "cheap". He contends it's largely due to 2 technologies, "the Pill" & high-quality internet pornography. There's also a chapter on non-monogamy's effects. The book is non-fiction. It will ruffle a few feathers. It's about 210 pages.

Recommended.

This is like, the American that us educated professionals live in: It's fucking great, we have it all, more material wealth, excess wealth, job options, than anyone in the history of ever - except everyone's depressed all the fucking time and it turns out your country cousins are happier about their middling job and ramshackle house in the sticks than we are in condos and riding bikeshares.

Also, to be honest, I don't know how you get around the implied answer problem - what person in a non-monogamous relationship is going to report that they're less happy with it than when they were (if they were) monogamous? @1 is right on in that regard.

I wonder if there's a revealed behavior test for sexual satisfaction?

This is not really 'science' but more like one of those quizzes people take on Facebook....

Self-reported subjective surveys go right into the trash.

Katie Katie Katie....this is why Dan reports on sex for The Stranger. He does crazy shit like use scientific evidence to support his assertions and not self-reported garbage.

BTW, I'm hung like a horse and have amazing sex three or four times a day. I just reported it so you know it's true!

@3 - Mark Regenerus is a debunked fraud and a quack. No thanks.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Reg…

@8,
Classic response. Have you read the book? You might want to.

You can prove anything with a biased sample.

@8 the link describes only controversy, but doesn't go into specifics about what the claims were about it's methodological unsoundness. I've never heard of the guy but i get the distinct impression that "debunked fraud and a quack" means "arrived at an ideologically inconvenient conclusion".