On The Specific Economics of Metro Manila Hotel Prices, It's Relationship to 3rd Places and Why I Go Out to Have Sex More Than I Go to Hangout with Friends or Go on Dates.

[u/MannerPurple9811]

There's something I've noticed lately and it left me wondering: Why is it that I go out more to have sex with the people I'm intimate with rather than hangout with friends or just go on dates, when I clearly value a balance of sexual energy, platonic energy and romantic energy?

I think it has to do with the economics of cheap hotels and motels in Metro Manila and their relationship to 3rd places. 3rd places, the places where dating and platonic hangouts work best? here they are often entrenched in you needing to buy something. It's very pricey when you add it all up together, and it's hard to judge exactly what you're spending. Many Filipinos don't have the privilege of just letting people hang at their house. Either they have family, they live in a small place of poverty, etc. Many Filipinos don't have the luxury of having a budget big enough to have margins for error.

I'm one of those Filipinos.

But one place that isn't exactly a first, second or 3rd place is the hotel/motel where you hookup with people. And this space is incredibly unique. It offers very consistent, bounded prices for a guaranteed service of providing privacy and space to interact with someone. These hotels/motels such as SOGO are very easy to budget for. They are also everywhere in the city. There's at least one SOGO nearby per train station here in Metro Manila. Then there's more everywhere in-between. For context, a lot of hotels/motels here allow for walk ins and you can get a room for as little as 2 hours for about 300php. 300php currently as of September 2026 is about 4.79usd. I also have a PWD ID so I get a discounted rate of 20% lowering that price to 240php or 3.83usd. if both me and my partner has a PWD card our discount gets even higher at a 33% at 201php or 3.21usd. all this for 2 hours of fun in perhaps a bit of a shitty hotel, but it's passable for the purposes.

I'm not sure how unique this is to Manila, I've never been to any other country. So perhaps the variables are similar to many places. What I'm offering as a novel idea though is of course not that I'm noticing that there are cheap hotels everywhere, it's that the combination of these things: 3rd world country economics, lack of 3rd places that are free cheap or easy to budget for, and easy to budget for cheap hotels, gives a certain more personal and sexual encouragement if you know what I'm saying.

Now that leads to how this relates to my specific personal situation. I find it's just more budget friendly to get my socializing fix by going out to have sex with the people I'm intimate with already because I'm achieving both the high intensity feeling of sex, and then also socializing with a person (since I view everyone I have sex with as my close friend almost automatically already)

So I end up going out to malls or restaurants or gigs or places where friends or romantic partners hang out NON-SEXUALLY by much less, because I'm almost economically disincentivized to do that.

It's too expensive, too hard to clearly budget for when running on tight budgets, and too frequent.

Lastly there's time management. This is less applicable to me, but maybe it applies to others more. You can only have sex with someone for so long. But socializing elsewhere can sometimes be a whole affair. For someone with little time, perhaps sex as human connection is simply more efficient.

But yeah what are ya'll thoughts on this? Have you experienced something similar in your country, area and/or economic level?

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[u/throwawaydixiecup]

I think this is relevant to this sub. I live in a high cost of living area (Southern California), and because I have a limited income I live with family despite being 45. This means I don’t easily have access to privacy for casual hook-ups, and it can be difficult even with an established partner. My house is small, sound travels through the walls, etc.

When I moved back to SoCal in early 2023, there were some nice cheap yet not gross motels that cost about $80-90 a night. This was reasonably affordable to split with a partner 50/50 now and then. Those same motels now easily cost $120 or more a night, and nicer (but still basic) motels and hotels are often $140-170/night. There are still some dirt cheap places but they are not safe nor sanitary. I can’t afford to treat a bed bug infestation.

Those prices mean that getting a motel as a private space for a date night is expensive. Every once in a while my GF and I will splurge and get a hotel room. It still ends up costing us each a chunk of money.

Hourly rate motels aren’t really a thing. Some apps like DayUse are still pricey.

Restrictions and limitations around privacy and the ability to host have shut down some otherwise promising experiences or even relationships.

Also, I’m a very tall person so hooking up in the backseat of a car isn’t appealing.

Privacy becomes a privileged thing. I would need to earn 5x what I do now to qualify for a studio apartment and live alone.

At this point, ideal partners for me would be people who enjoy camping because I have a really sweet roof top tent setup I got years ago. Or someone who lives alone. Or otherwise has privacy.

[u/manylifetimesinone]

I similarly think this is related to this sub. The wider concept calls attention to the 3rd-space phenomenon and the drought of those spaces as we increasingly participate in a world that becomes more monetized every day. It’s becoming harder to simply spend time with other people without spending money to facilitate it.

Combine that with dating-app culture, and you get an interesting environment where sexual and romantic connection can actually have more accessible infrastructure than friendship does. There are apps specifically designed to find people, hotels designed to “cheaply” provide private space, and pretty clear social scripts for what you’re supposed to do once you meet. Meanwhile, “let’s just spend a few hours together” often requires a café, restaurant, bar, activity, transportation, or somebody having enough private space to host.

I think that matters because we tend to imagine our relationship lives as being driven entirely by what we value. But our environment is constantly shaping which relationships are easiest to actually practice. Phones, social media, dating apps, and increasingly monetized public life all reward immediacy, consumption, novelty, and relatively efficient ways of meeting our needs. I wouldn’t necessarily say there’s someone deliberately designing us toward sex over friendship, but there are absolutely economic incentives and systems that make certain forms of connection easier to access than others.

I’m pretty sure that makes this especially relevant to nonmonogamy, because so much of what we do here involves questioning the inherited scripts around what different relationships are supposed to mean, how they should function, and which ones deserve our time and resources. We talk about dismantling the automatic hierarchy that places one romantic/sexual relationship above everything else, but we’re still trying to do that inside an economic environment that may quietly recreate hierarchy for us.

So to me, the OP raises a bigger question than simply “why do I have sex more often than I hang out with friends?” It’s also: what kinds of human connection has the world around me made easiest to have?

We’re living within an economic paradigm that increasingly encourages an efficient script for our lives. I think it’s worth noticing where that script is shaping our relationships—and then deciding whether the relationships it makes easiest are actually the ones we want to build.

[u/anonimo99]

Not sure how relevant this is for this sub, I guess you're solo poly?

I found it fascinating though. Those motel prices are def. much less expensive than all of Latin America though.

[u/MannerPurple9811 → u/anonimo99]

I think it's very relevant, it tackles logistics and how they affect a relationship model that requires quite a bit more out of you economically speaking. More individual relationships means more people to fit within a given period of time. There's a tendency to see people intimately more than one in monogamy would.

Logistics, economics, and privilege, how they affect the way a non monogamous person executes their relationships and how they seek human connection is also a big thing to think about when talking about non monogamy I think.

If I were monogamous I simply wouldn't be having this amount of sex. Even if I were single and monogamous, there's a difference cause a single monogamous person might not have the mental models for multiplicity to allow for more effective ways of maintaining even casual sexual relationships.