We ALL settle, in one way or another. Worrying that you don't measure up to your partner's previous partners, is silly, counterproductive, and a never-ending source of insecurity.

This fear of not being your partner's "best", seems to be rampant on PPD, especially among the men. Most of the time, these concerns have a physical basis, manifesting in a fear, that your partner has had someone "hotter" than you.

On the basis of sheer, raw mathematics, most of us, men and women, will have dated someone objectively, physically "hotter" than the person we eventually settle down with. There's nothing wrong with that. Everyone has "ghosts" in their past, and you shouldn't worry about competing with those "ghosts".

BOTH men and women settle, in one way or another. One of the data points from the infamous OK Cupid study, that always seems to be left on the "cutting room floor" whenever the study is talked about here on PPD, is the fact that the most attractive women in the study, received 25 TIMES the messages of the least attractive women. Clearly, the men in the study start by shooting high, and then they adjust their expectations to someone more reasonable. In other words.....they SETTLE.

Unless your partner is Chris Hemsworth or Gal Gadot, it's pretty easy to take a walk in your local mall on a Saturday afternoon, and find someone objectively hotter than your partner, as would be determined by panel of 3rd parties. So what?

As one of the older men here, If I were to name one human activity, that is NEVER the same in real life, as it is in your fantasies, it would be sex. The actual experience of sex, is nothing like porn, and it's often nothing like you imagined. Sometimes it's better, often it's worse. That's true for both men and women.

When I was a younger man, I did what a lot of young men do.....I chased BODIES. I assumed, that the best experience in bed, would always come from the woman with the objectively "hottest" body. It wasn't until I was older, with a fair amount of sexual experience under my belt, that I realized how wrong that assessment is.

Some of my best experiences, were with women that most would consider to be average, however, the passion and enthusiasm shown by those women, made the experience wonderful. On the other hand, I've had a few experiences with women that most would consider to be exceptionally attractive, that turned out to be awkward, "starfish" encounters, due to a lack of passion on one or both sides, or various sexual hang-ups or inhibitions. It wasn't anyone's fault, we just didn't "mesh" all that well.

That same principle applies to women's enjoyment of sex as well, perhaps even more so than men. Women want CONNECTION. If you make her orgasm, if you make her feel good, and feel good about herself, then her memories of YOU are going to be FAR move vivid, that her memories of some distant, chiseled "Chad", with whom she probably didn't orgasm with anyway, statistically speaking.

You guys need to believe the women on this board, when they tell you that their experience and enjoyment of sex is very SUBJECTIVE, often based on connection, and not quantitatively determined by some guy's jaw bone, abs or penis.

If you guys insist on following the "Ask the fisherman, not the fish" rule, and won't believe the women here, than believe this older fisherman, who's caught his share of fish, and GREATLY changed his ideas over the years, as to which fish are worth keeping, and which ones should be thrown back. Your partner's connection with YOU is unique. Work on making it better, and the "Chad ghost" will be a long forgotten memory.