There was a scene in the movie Risky Business where Tom Cruise’s character is trying to recruit a classmate to his “brothel.” Please keep in mind it’s an old movie so the dollar amounts are low, but you get the idea. His pitch was as follows:
So, you took her out to dinner twice.
What did that cost you?
About $30.
With tip?
Okay, maybe $35.
Any movies?
Three movies.
$20.
Parking?
I park on the street.
Gas?
Maybe $6.
All right, Stan, you’re in for roughly $60 odd dollars.
What happened?
She slept with Jacobsen.
One night a buddy of mine was complaining to me about the exorbitant cost and unfairness of divorce. Jokingly, I suggested that the fairest way to calculate a divorce settlement would be to pay a woman for every time she had sex with you while married.
What Is Sex Costing You?
The thought stuck with me, and I couldn’t help but wonder what sex was costing me in purely economic terms. Applying microeconomic principles in a way that my business school professors never expected, the CPO concept was born. Here is how it works. You tally up 100% of the money you spend on a woman during the course of “dating” her and divide that amount by the number of times you have sex with her.
By way of example, if you are a traditional beta male, you buy a woman three expensive dinners at ~$200 each, and try to close her on the third date. If you were successful and had sex twice, your CPO would be $300 ($200 * 3 / 2). As a beta, there is a decent chance you don’t even close. You could argue that you should only use the money spent on her (divide the numbers in 1/2) and your CPO is still $150. I would argue you wouldn’t usually spend $100 to have dinner by yourself but calculate it however you want. The key is consistency.
I have diligently tracked my CPO for the last 4 months. It was $44.15, $20.82, $36.75 and $37.20. I recommend that every guy track it for at least a few months to see what sex is really costing you.
My CPO might seem a bit high, but in my defense, I always have 1-2 women in my monthly rotation that are out-of-towners. In fact, in my most recent 4-month period I had an unusually high number of women (eleven) that were out-of-towners. Most of them are struggling college students, so I do buy their plane ticket. But I plan in advance and can usually get a ticket for between $200-$250. If it wasn’t for this variable, my average CPO would be closer to $10-$12.
On average, in one month I spend a total of $1,750 on all dating activities, close 4-5 new girls for the first time, and have 6-9 different girls. I average around 50 orgasms a month (I admit to having a very high sex drive). I would argue that having sex with 50+ new young, beautiful women a year (none below a 7) and having sex over 600 times a year is well worth ~$20,000. Money damn well spent. If I removed my costs for out-of-town women my annual spend would be closer to $8,000.
Compare this to your average beta that is dating or has a girlfriend. Imagine a 30-something guy who takes his girlfriend out to one nice dinner once a week, one vacation a year (her portion), one weekend trip a year, plus her birthday, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, costs for 2-3 weddings (you are her date and likely pay even though it is her friend getting married) and he could EASILY spend more than $15,000 a year. And what value does he get for his money? He gets to have occasional, uneventful sex with ONE woman.
What Is A Married Guy’s CPO?
I could do the same math for a married guy but I won’t bother since the numbers are ridiculous. My one friend when calculating his CPO actually got angry. “God damn it, my CPO is infinity!” And the worse part is for most of my married friends, they close their eyes and imagine either A) their wife is the younger, tighter version of themselves or B) Scarlett Johansson (or insert celebrity crush here).
Think about Kobe Bryant having to buy his wife a $4 million ring to “compensate” her for him cheating on her. Or Tiger Woods paying his nanny ex-wife $250 million in his divorce settlement. Even if Tiger slept with 100 women and came 5 times with each of them, his CPO was $500,000. And let’s be honest, some of the women he cheated with weren’t even that cute. That’s what happens when you marry a nanny when you are 25 years old and are worth a billion dollars.
I don’t know why these otherwise smart men do such stupid things. They buy the cow for an obscene sum of money when they could easily have the milk inexpensively or even free. Probably 80% of women Tiger Woods slept with would kill to be able to say they had sex with him. It is part of the reason why I admire Derek Jeter so much. He is the only high-profile athlete I can think of that has stayed single, kept all his money and slept with ½ of the Maxim 100 Hottest Women.
Now, let’s imagine the CPO for a married guy getting a divorce. Let’s say he is married for 15 years and has sex four times a month for the entire time he is married (which according to my married friends would be nothing short of a miracle). That’s about 720 times he would have had sex during a 15-year marriage. What was his CPO?
For simplicity sake, I will assume the wife is a stay-at-home mom and that she costs no more than a nanny/maid/cook would cost. If they buy a house and save for retirement she will get half of what is saved/invested and alimony for at least 8 years. Let’s assume only $30,000 a year in alimony for the 8 years. I will assume their house is worth $400,000 (in equity) when they get divorced. Investments and retirement accounts are worth $200,000. I will ignore any child support. These are all conservative numbers for a middle class family. That works out to $540,000. The married guy’s CPO works out to be $750 to have sex with the same woman who gets less attractive year after year and is probably at least 30-40 lbs heavier than when he first married her. My CPO to have sex with beautiful 18-24 year olds averages about $35 even when I factor in transportation costs for out-of-town women.
Sex Always Comes Down To Money
I can hear the rants from feminists and even guys about distilling sex down to money. “You are paying for sex!” “You might as well go to a prostitute!” Sex is about money! If sex wasn’t about money there wouldn’t be alimony, child support, pre-nups, palimony, engagement rings, and weddings that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I could go on forever.
I will make one exception here. In 1 in 4 married households the woman makes more money then the husband. But this ends up being both good news and bad news. Good news because the man is much less likely to get screwed in a divorce. But actually awful news for the woman. A man who earns less that his wife is significantly more likely to cheat on her. In fact, if he is totally dependent on her income (stay-at-home-dad) he is 500% more likely to be unfaithful. Don’t believe me? See reference here.
Clearly all women and all sex isn’t equal. So let me be clear. I don’t have sex with a woman unless I like her and truly enjoy her company. If a woman seems like drama, difficult, or has a sense of entitlement, I don’t waste my time. Life is too short. I don’t live and die by CPO, but it is a concept that keeps me sharp and helps ensure that I don’t let any woman get me to do anything I don’t absolutely want to do.
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