In the last 5 years I have seen an explosion of hopeless romantics lamenting how we live in a “hookup culture,” that most women just want casual encounters over LTR, and that the entire dating scene is one big wild orgy now.

Based on both anecdotal experience and extensive research to confirm that this is indeed every bit as ridiculous as it sounds, I have concluded that this is absolutely not the case. The dating scene has changed dramatically in the last decade to be sure, but not this dramatically. OLD has given women unforeseen access to an unlimited number of both casual and committed romantic partners, greatly upsetting an already extremely unbalanced playing field.

There are certainly women who have used this as an opportunity to have discrete casual encounters that previously would have been much more difficult to conceal, however the vast majority of women still are not simply giving it up that easily and most of them want some sort of committed relationship attached.

There have always been hookups in both the party and dating scene, but this idea that it is now common for women to rack up N counts in the 20s and 30s by the time they settle down is an exaggeration and mostly inaccurate. Women are insanely picky, possibly more so now than ever before due to the plethora of options available to them. Almost every single study in the thousands that have been done has concluded that most women have an average of 7 sexual partners in their lifetime.