Ok, so this is pretty interesting.
Here’s a study purporting that the hypergamous nature of females is on the decline due to the continued outperformance of females compared to males in the workplace and education.
So I’ll leave a link to the study for you to check out, but essentially it boils down to this…
As a country becomes more industrialised and democratic, women are shown to outcompete men in college education overall. So the current figures are that 60% of college students in the states are female and that trend is predicted to rise to around 70% in the next 10 years.
And, as a result of this, as the study states:
a common theory is that the rise of women’s education increases their economic independence thereby reducing the need for marriage (Becker, 1973) and it also raises the standards for minimally acceptable matches with some accompanying risk of non-marriage (Oppenheimer, 1988; Van Bavel, 2012). However, the steady growth of women’s education has the potential to powerfully alter the tendency for men to marry women with less education than themselves.
In other words, the study suggests that traditional marriage practices in which men “marry down” in education do not persist for long once women have the educational advantage.
So, is this the end of hypergamy???
Well, I don’t think so because this study doesn’t seem to take into account something that I’ll admit is really hard to test for in statistical research BUT is really important for the validity of this study…
So we’ll get to that in a second but, first off, what is hypergamy?
Hypergamy is the feeling of wanting to get the best deal for yourself as a woman. The feeling of wanting to date a number of rungs up on the socio-economic ladder.
THE FEELING….
Do you know what resource is still majorly lacking in our society, even with all our high-tech gadgetry and wizardry and “connectedness”?
SELF ESTEEM…
The study doesn’t take into account the self-esteem levels of the women. Even though they may be well educated, Women with low self-esteem will stay with deadbeat men and men with lower education levels because that’s the best that they FEEL they deserve.
THAT'S STILL HYPERGAMY!
So it’s not as if the biological tables have been turned upside down here.
The inclining levels of women “dating down” is not a natural preference. It’s not like women have gone “we are the protectors now, we need to take care of men”. A switch hasn’t flipped in women's heads.
It’s just that one of two things are happening here that kinda sucks if you’re a woman:
Either your self-esteem sucks and you still think that deadbeat boyfriend that keeps borrowing money from you and promising to pay you back is your best romantic option. And this happens FAR more than males are willing to admit…
I mean during my most recent podcast with Urska Rubin who, in my eyes, is an attractive switched-on young woman, she confessed that she was dating a male gold digger for about a year and paying his rent and buying him computers and all sorts of stuff and she admitted she didn’t have her head switched on properly during this time.
And here’s something even weirder. During my sugar dating exploits (which you can read all about in my book "Here Be Dragons") the girl I had the longest relationship with, constantly complained of her deadbeat ex-boyfriend who stayed home playing computer games all day while she worked and paid all the bills.
That’s why she was on a sugar dating site. She felt like she was owed something by men, that it was her turn to be taken care of…
The only reason why you, as a woman, would put up with this situation is if you thought you couldn’t do any better. That deadbeat was your best romantic, hypergamous option at the time…
The OTHER thing that’s happening here is also pretty brutal: Women are putting up with relationships they’re not satisfied with.
I mean, the rising levels of female infidelity amongst educated women say it all here.
The fact of the matter is MOST women won’t get the top-tier man, no matter how good they are at their job.
Men don’t care if their woman is a barrister or a barista. MOST Men don’t choose their partner based on their job or their earning capacity.
We just don’t care about that...
Primarily we care about whether you’re fuckable or not. That’s certainly not the only thing we’re concerned about but it is ultimately the most important thing to most guys.
I’m sorry but that’s just the way guys are…
We don’t care about your job. In terms of vocation, as long as you have something that you’re interested in other than me, some sort of passion or interest, that’s all that really matters. But, generally speaking, we don’t care if your passion is a huge money earner or not. As long as you’re not broke and you don’t need to be bailed out, your income-earning capacity doesn’t even enter our thoughts…
And this is also worth saying I think: fuckability has different parameters based on whether we’re looking for a long-term or short-term partner.
If short term then it’s predominantly how physically healthy and attractive you visually are.
Nothing else matters.
However, if we’re looking for a longer-term partner we look for more nurturing qualities such as kindness and affability and signs of loyalty because we want our potential children to have a good mother.
So, by its mere definition, top-tier men can only be monogamous with one woman, so they will choose the best woman.
ONE WOMAN.
MOST WOMEN WILL MISS OUT…
It’s like that movie "HighLander" with Christopher Lambert.
"There can only be one."
Everyone else misses out.
Therefore MOST women that get married will not be married to their first choice, or their second third or fourth choice for that matter.
And that kinda sucks for them…
Oh, and here’s another lovely thing that happens apparently in relationships where women outearn the man…
The study states this:
What about marital outcomes? In societies in which wives have more education or earn more than their husbands, do relationships suffer? Evidence from the United States speaks against these fears. Prior to the 1980s when men clearly had more education than women and hypergamy was normative, men who married women with more education were more likely to divorce. However, as the situation reversed and wives now have more education than their husbands, the association between wives’ educational advantage and divorce has disappeared. Among marriages formed since the 1990s, wives with more education than their husbands are now no more likely to divorce than other couples (Schwartz and Han 2014). A similar trend is observed for couples in which women out-earn their husbands (Schwartz and Gonalons-Pons 2015). This evidence is consistent with the notion that, at least in the United States, couples have adapted to the changing realities of the marriage market and are no longer at increased risk of divorce when women have an educational or earnings advantage.
Ok, so apparently expectations SEEM to be starting to change yeah?
Well, consider this too…
Studies show an increase in partner violence caused by male mate guarding because of the increased risk of paternal fraud due to higher-status females hanging around higher-status males in the workplace leading to more potential for adultery.
Perhaps this has something to do with why there’s no difference in the divorce rates. Women might just be more shit scared to get a divorce!
In a recent video, I discussed the two strategies males use for mate retention: resource provision and cost infliction.
So you can retain a mate by either providing resources or you can do it by creating a cost infliction, whereby leaving will create such a cost that it’s better to just stay with the partner.
So think of the whole “I’m gonna set you and the kids on fire if you try to leave me” scenario…
Apparently “low-value men” are now, more than ever using this cost infliction strategy to stay with their partners, and while I think this is completely abhorrent behaviour and I think that any violence of any kind against ANY partner is completely disgusting, AND I’m certainly not blaming women for this behaviour, when a males ability to retain a mate through resource provision is taken away it can be understood, NOT justified but understood that men will feel the increasing need to resort to a cost infliction strategy.
Ok, so with all this being said, how do we as men overcome this shit sandwich of backwards relationship hypogamic fuckery?
Well, it’s pretty simple as far as I see it.
Become more masculine. Lean into domestic traditional gender roles more…
If women are spending more time becoming traditionally more educated and intellectual, they ain’t learning trades. They ain’t physically making shit, and they ain’t able to fix shit.
They’re spending more time just pushing paper around on a desk as accountants and lawyers and whatever…
They’re doing white-collar work. We need to focus on blue-collar work, because when it all comes down to it, blue-collar work underpins all of our society anyway…
You know, my next-door neighbour was a corporate lawyer. Very smart man. But the dude couldn’t even change the fucking tyre on his car when he got a flat in his driveway. He didn’t know how to operate his jack. I honestly couldn’t believe it. I had to go and help him change his tyre. Like, seriously.
You can’t afford, probably now more than ever, to be like my neighbour.
We’re going to have to collectively lean into our traditional domestic gender roles here.
If you want to stay married or have a long-term relationship with a woman, you are going to have to find some way to be a good deal for women who are earning more than you and generally outperforming you in white-collar industries.
The good news for you is that could come in many forms….
Be physically stronger than her. Have more street smarts than her. Be more well-read and more educationally well-rounded than her. She’s likely to be highly specialised in one field so learn to be a jack of all trades literally. Learn to be more emotionally mature than her.
Figure out how you can be “looked up to” by her, and then she will feel as though you’re still a good deal, even when she’s the main breadwinner.
Whatever you do, do not try to compete with her in something that she is likely to be your superior. I know women say they don’t care about this all the time but I absolutely guarantee they do. Don’t fall for it when they say they don’t care. I can’t stress this enough…
For example, my long-term girlfriend is a personal trainer, I’ve spoken about her a few times before, she’s extremely fit like she’s CrossFit athlete-level fit.
It would be stupid of me to try to compete with her in her field of expertise. Like, if my main thing was also fitness, but she was just better than me at it. That would be a disaster.
No, instead I focus on other pursuits and disciplines, so I’m generally smarter than her, more well read and I also just know how to do more stuff than her. I’m more well-rounded. So she still has plenty to look up to me for.
Be better than her at stuff she values other than income, and you’ll be fine.