Intel's Sophie's Choice

by publius

Intel asks the truly tough questions (the point of the study was ostensibly to show how important the Internets have become):

Men have always faced challenges when it comes to romance. Here’s a sign that technology may have raised another hurdle. An online survey commissioned by Intel has found, among other things, that 46% of women would rather go without sex for two weeks than give up the Internet for that long. . . . Some 30% of all men would swap sex for the Internet for two weeks, if they had to[.]

These numbers actually seem low to me. I mean, it's two weeks. I dare say that many couples go that long, even without such wrenching Sophie's Choices facing them. I think the more interesting numbers would start coming if you increased the time period to, say, months, instead of weeks. Also, at that time range, would the gender numbers start diverging more sharply?

That's why I'm here folks -- to keep things at a very high intellectual level.

Comments

[Fraud Guy]

I will get offline right away, and ask my wife which option she would prefer.

[Fraud Guy]

Still posting.

[Tony P.]

How much of "the internet" is pornography, nowadays?

I mean, giving up internet access might amount to giving up sex, for some fraction of the survey respondents :)

--TP

[voxpoptart]

The terms of the discussion aren't clear.

Would I give up two weeks of my sex life now rather than give up the Internet? Sure. I have a 2-year-old and a newborn; what sex life? It's a discussion about two activities in vastly unequal quantities.

There _have_ been periods in my life when having sex took hours of my day. I did, quite happily, sacrifice the Internet at those times, and would again in the unlikely event that the choice came up. That's a very different question. I don't think we know which question the respondents were answering, so we can't judge what their answers mean.

[hilzoy]

Does it work in reverse? Can we get free internet access by giving up sex? Or sex by giving up the internet?

[Anthony Damiani]

It would seem that I pretty much have, already.

[Hartmut]

Well, if I was guaranteed good sex for just not going online for 2 weeks...I am all for it ;-)

[novakant]

These numbers actually seem low to me. I mean, it's two weeks. I dare say that many couples go that long, even without such wrenching Sophie's Choices facing them.

Is this true, i.e. lots of people cohabiting but only having sex twice a month over years?

I've heard married people drop hints to that extent, but have always been too discreet to inquire further and the sample rate would have been too low anyway.

Are there representative (tricky, I guess because people might be inclined to lie) studies on this?

[DecideFenceSitter]

Anecdotal Data - Novakant, yes. And my (now) ex-wife and I hadn't even had kids. We were intimate more often than that, but my due to my instigation than her desire.

[ghost of a user]

novakant,
Yes

[cleek]

sometimes i hate browser auto-fill.

[tom p]

I know a # of couples that go with out sex for wks at a time too... My buddies won't shut up about how horny they are.

[liberal japonicus]

I'm sure it depends on how much throughput the woman is getting.

[Tracy]

Well, since we're keeping things at a high intellectual level...

Novakant & others - I've been married for 10 years and have two young children (8 and 4), and I'd say, on average, 4 times a week. Usually he instigates, but I'd estimate it's about 60/40. It really depends on the couple. Everyone has a required threshold for close physical contact - not necessarily sex, maybe just affectionate gestures throughout the day. Some couples are okay with or used to living without much contact*. We're not.

As for the original post, it would be rough for me either way, but there's really no question here. Giving up the internet would mean paying bills the old fashioned way, and I'd probably have to remove my computer from view to resist temptation. I'm not sure whether I'd start reading newspapers or just wait until the two weeks were up to catch up on news. Even so, I'd still rather give up the internet. I might have to stock up on books or, horror of horrors, work on some of the projects I'm procrastinating on**, but I'd manage.

*or just not admitting the extent of the problem

**because, despite the best efforts of pretty much everyone during their late teens/early twenties, you can't have sex 24/7.

[Danothebaldyheid]

As an interesting case study for novakant, I thought I'd point out that my girlfriend and I ceased cohabiting a year and three months ago. We have seen each other on 6 occasions since then and my hit rate for that time is at least three times greater than when we lived together....

[hilzoy]

Yikes! My computer got bad RAM, and while I did get an appointment at the Apple Store more or less immediately, they said, at first, that I would have to leave the computer there for days. Eventually, they decided that they could take out one RAM thingo and let me take it home, all booted up. But for a while, I thought I was going to have to actually do without it.

It was scary how awful that thought was. -- Some part of me always wanted to be self-sufficient -- the sort of person whose possessions fit in a thimble, who made her own soap from scratch, etc., etc. This is, of course, all a fantasy, but it has a certain power over me. And seeing how badly I reacted to this was sort of alarming -- it was as though I had been asked to leave a limb in the Apple Store for a week or so.

Hmm.

[dr ngo]

Novakant: I would respond to your query, but I suspect there is an unstated codicil:

Members of AARP need not apply.

[tgirsch]

novakant:

I may be in the minority here, but that's not true in my case. It's not as often as it was in the beginning, of course, but it's still fairly regular (and of much higher quality these days). Of course, I've "only" been married 11 years.

[rate my girlfriend]

i am not sure what to think about this.