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Key points
- There has been much ado about people who are voluntarily or involuntarily celibate.
- There's a case to be made for not defining yourself in terms of the frequency, absence, or direction of your sexual behaviors.
- People who are less concerned with mating motives are less depressed and less anxious.
Note: This post was co-written by David Lundberg Kenrick.
Are you a “breeder,” an “incel,” or an “ace"?
In recent years, there has been a lot of back and forth about the extent to which one should embrace a celibate lifestyle. On the one hand, there are whole online communities dedicated to the woes of being “involuntarily celibate” (often referred to as “incels”). On the other hand, there are other people who voluntarily embrace being asexual (sometimes called “aces”). These groups share a common plight: They often feel a great deal of social pressure to have sex (whether their celibacy is voluntary or involuntary). And both have to deal with negative stereotypes about their lifestyle (such as “virgin vs. chad” memes and the recently disproven notion that incels are an alt-right white-power group).
The past few days have been pretty notable for the celibate community. After Olivia Wilde called Jordan Peterson a “hero to the incel community,” Peterson responded empathetically, by saying “Sure, why not…they’re lonesome and they don’t know what to do and everyone piles abuse on them.” And a recent study by Will Costello and his colleagues found that although “incels” are more depressed than the population at large, they are, contrary to popular stereotypes, actually more ethnically diverse and more left-leaning than the general population (Costello et al., 2022).
It isn’t only men or Americans who are partnerless, incidentally. While the percentage of partnerless men age 18 to 24 has gone from 18.9 in 2000 to 30.9 in 2018, sexual inactivity among women aged 25 to 34 has also gone up over the same period—from 7.0 percent to 12.6 percent (Ueda et al., 2020).
NYU professor Scott Galloway has talked about a “mating crisis,” but is the focus on mating perhaps a central part of the problem?
How About a “More to Life” Movement?
Bella DePaulo has written extensively on the potential benefits of being single (e.g., DePaulo & Morris, 2005). But we’d suggest an even more radical approach: Stop defining yourself in terms of the presence, absence, frequency, or direction of your sexual encounters. Indeed, there’s evidence that people who spend less time and effort on finding mates, and more time and effort on caring for family and friends, are relatively less anxious and depressed (Ko et al., 2020; Pick et al., 2022).
So, regardless of how successful you are in the mating market, if you want to stop letting your self-image revolve around sex, and focus on nonsexual ways to enjoy life, here are seven suggestions—one for each of the fundamental human motives we’ve discussed elsewhere (Kenrick & Kenrick, 2022; see How to Survive the Modern World With a Stone-Age Brain).
7 Ways to Channel Personal Mating Motivation in More Fulfilling Directions
1. Focus on caring for your family members. Obviously, if you have children of your own, taking care of them can be one of your best options for passing on “your” genes. But taking care of other relatives can have an impact as well. Of course, our minds are not designed to think about our “inclusive fitness”; they are designed to feel good when we make someone in our group feel good, or help them improve their lot in life.
2. Help your friends or relatives maintain their relationships. You may be able to offer social support and encouragement to friends and relatives who are having relationship troubles or even offer to help in ways that prevent those troubles (by, say, offering to babysit or watch their pets while they go away for a weekend). If you have previous relationships that have ended, go out of your way to be forgiving and supportive. It feels a lot better than holding a grudge, and they can’t be all bad, because they did pick you at some point.
3. Act as a wingman or matchmaker. Even if you aren’t dating, you can help your friends find a partner (Ackerman & Kenrick, 2009). Heck, perhaps they’ll pass on the genes that make them people you like. This is a particularly popular choice for grandmas, but it can work for you, too!
4. Choose a job that helps other people. There’s plenty of evidence that doing nice things for others improves our own mood (Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008). With the time you’re not wasting swiping left and right on Tinder, you could make yourself useful to your coworkers and help them get some prestige and appreciation on the job (which, of course, will be killing two birds with one stone, because you will, too).
5. Take care of your friends. Have more interactions with friends. There’s evidence that more face-to-face contact with friends is good for your mental health (Twenge, 2017).
6. Get a dog. Dogs make us feel safer; some say it’s the best alarm system you can buy. Plus, they feel nice to pet, and, according to our favorite dog expert, they genuinely love people (Wynne, 2020).
7. Take care of your body. Whether you’re dating or not, you’re a person worth taking care of. Basic survival is at the foundation of the pyramid of needs, and there are decades of evidence that getting regular exercise reduces anxiety and raises your mood (Mikkelson et al., 2017; Taylor et al., 1985).
References
Ackerman, J. M., & Kenrick, D. T. (2009). Cooperative courtship: Helping friends raise and raze relationship barriers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(10), 1285-1300.
Costello, W., Rolon, V., Thomas, A. G., & Schmitt, D. (2022). Levels of Well-Being Among Men Who Are Incel (Involuntarily Celibate). Evolutionary Psychological Science, 1-16.
Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319(5870), 1687-1688
Kenrick, D.T., & Lundberg-Kenrick, D.E. (2022). Solving Modern Problems with a Stone-Age Brain: Human evolution and the 7 Fundamental Motives. Washington: APA Books.
Ko, A., Pick, C.M., Kwon, J.Y., Barlev, M., Krems, J.A., Varnum, M.E.W… (team of 34 international collaborators) & Kenrick, D.T. (2020). Family values: Rethinking the psychology of human social motivation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15 (1), 173-201
Mikkelsen, K., Stojanovska, L., Polenakovic, M., Bosevski, M., & Apostolopoulos, V. (2017). Exercise and mental health. Maturitas, 106, 48-56.
Pick, C.M., Ko, A., Wormley, A.S., Wiezel, A., Kenrick, D.T. (team of 61 international collaborators)….. &Varnum, M.E.W. (2022). Family Still Matters: Human Social Motivation during a Global Pandemic. Evolution & Human Behavior, in press
Taylor, C. B., Sallis, J. F., & Needle, R. (1985). The relation of physical activity and exercise to mental health. Public health reports, 100(2), 195
Twenge, J. M. (2017). Have smartphones destroyed a generation. The Atlantic, 9, 2017
Ueda, P., Mercer, C. H., Ghaznavi, C., & Herbenick, D. (2020). Trends in frequency of sexual activity and number of sexual partners among adults aged 18 to 44 years in the US, 2000-2018. JAMA Network Open, 3(6), e203833-e203833
Wynne, C. D.L. (2020). Dog is love: Why and how your dog loves you. Boston: Mariner Books.
