“Men’s instincts tend toward polygamy, women’s toward hypergamy. Hypergamy, for those who don’t know, is women’s congenital inclination to continually trade up in men. The word has Greek origins (hyper meaning ‘above’ and gamos meaning ‘marriage’) and originally referred to women’s tendency to “marry up”, but applies equally to non-matrimonial relationships.
Whereas all men have a natural urge to copulate with a great variety of fertile women (because, in our evolutionary history, such behavior improved our chances of gene proliferation), women have a corresponding biological drive to have relations with the highest quality man they possible can (for the same reason) and to gain exclusive commitment from that man. Briefly put, men want a lot of women, women want one really great guy.
Men and women’s respective sexual interests are therefore perpetually at odds, and the competition is zero sum in nature; for one sexual strategy to succeed, the other must be thwarted. If women are to fulfill their reproductive goal of getting exclusive commitment from a man, the man cannot simultaneously fulfill his reproductive objective of impregnating a harem and vice versa.
Which of the two strategies prevails has varied throughout history. During certain periods and in certain areas, men were free to indulge their polygamous nature, as indeed they still are in certain contemporary societies. In the current industrialized world, however, female reproductive interests benefit the most. Polygamy is banned and monogamy is strongly encouraged, while hypergamy is not discouraged. Women are thus at liberty to fulfill their natural biological imperatives at the expense of men.
For most of human history, only a minority of men but a majority of women managed to reproduce, because a relatively smaller proportion of dominant men slept with a relatively larger proportion of the women, partly because the dominant males within a tribe tended to mate with many women but also because far more men than women suffered a violent demise.
Picture an armed conflict between two tribes. What happened to the men and what happened to the women? The men from each tribe fought each other and the losing side of males were killed, often along with their children. The women, however, were kept for mating purposes. Women who pledged eternal allegiance to her tribe, the “I would rather die than sleep with the enemy”-types, were killed. So women developed a certain willingness to (sometimes reluctantly, other times not) mate with the men who killed their husbands, fathers and brothers. This happens even today.
Monogamy later developed because it promoted superior civilizations and stabilized society. Dominant chiefs who did not hoard all the women for themselves but instead let more of his followers have wives could build a greater degree of support among a larger number of men, making his army more formidable and reducing the occurrence of internecine strife. Monogamy is also the healthiest environment in which a child can grow up (because having both a mother and a father improved the child’s security and access to resources), which meant higher rates of survival within monogamous tribes.
Both male polygamy and female hypergamy are perfectly natural and healthy preferences insofar as they have evolved over the years to better ensure the continuation of our DNA. All other things being equal, a woman who had children with the most successful and highest possible status man she could get (status and success have, admittedly, meant a variety of things over the years), had a greater chance of passing along her genes. A woman who, after first having children with one man, bore the child of another, only enjoyed a genetic advantage if the next man was of higher status.
Conversely, the more fertile women a man banged, the greater his chances of passing along his genes. The reportedly prolific lover Genghis Khan, for instance, who spent decades bedding the wives and daughters of the men he subjugated and killed, as well as building a harem of thousands of young women, was perhaps history’s most successful man in terms of reproduction: A 2003 study headed by Chris Tyler-Smith found that 0.5% of all men alive are direct descendants of the great Mongol invader of lands and wombs.
Whereas men’s natural desire for promiscuity is curbed through institutional and social reinforcement mechanisms (marriage, religious edicts, disapproval), female hypergamy is somewhat more tolerated in post-industrial societies. If you want to understand more about why this is the case, read The Rational Male by Rollo Tomassi.
Hypergamy is also the reason why men and women love differently. The abovementioned Tomassi was the first to introduce me to this idea: Only men are truly able to love a mate unconditionally. Women are not.
When discussing some of the topics in this book with a friend of mine, he asked “Shouldn’t men find women who love them for who they are instead of what they are? One who doesn’t care if you are rich or poor. One who will stay with you through thick and thin?”. This is a sentiment shared by a lot of good men and I admire the ingenuousness with which he asked the question. It reflects my friend’s propensity for unconditional love and his projecting of that same capacity onto women.
But a woman’s love is always conditional. When a man says he want a woman to love him for who he is, the type of love he is referring to is the kind only his mother can give him. Your mother is the only woman who can love you unconditionally.
In our brutish past, a man who fell out of love with and subsequently left his aging and bloating wife would jeopardize the survival of their common offspring. So nature left a fail-safe mechanism in place to ensure that men didn’t leave their wives even when they were no longer as aesthetically pleasing as in their youth: unconditional love. This is one reason, incidentally, that although high SMV men often take on younger mistresses later in life (because they are hotter) they still profess undying love and devotion for their wives. They aren’t usually lying when they say this.
On the other hand, a woman who remained in love with a man who had, say, become a cripple and lost all his provisioning ability (the male equivalent to a hysterectomy in women) would severely limit her chances of passing along her genes. Women, or rather, women’s genes, could not afford to be irrationally devoted to a man without the capacity to feed and protect his children. And this is why nature left in place an inverse fail-safe for women: conditional love.
The truth is, all female love is conditional in one way or another and a man can never separate who he is from what he is. Women marry men either on the basis of already manifested accomplishments or the potential for such accomplishments. A woman who falls in love with and marries young to a man with a promising future is taking a chance on him, but if he turns out to be a listless couch potato later in life, she will fall out of love with him.
Now, before you start disparaging women for being so calculating and pragmatic in matters of the heart, remember that a) hypergamy is a perfectly rational reproductive strategy in light of the greater physical responsibilities and risks women have in terms of childbearing and b) it is actually great for civilization. Women are looking to get the most resource-rich men they can and that’s why we have cell-phones, symphonies and self-driving cars. Guys who didn’t look like Brad Pitt still wanted to find a high quality mate, which meant they needed to bring something other than looks to the table. So they went out and created more resources for themselves (and others).
Since women invariably flock to the highest quality males this pushes men to continually strive for improvements. Improving themselves, improving the world, creating useful tools, crafting beautiful works of art, writing moving songs and so on.
Someone (I don’t know exactly who) once remarked that a man guaranteed a steady flow of blowjobs from supermodels for the rest of his life would be perfectly content to live in a cardboard box. While that statement is no doubt an exaggeration, it illustrates the point that the amenities men have created in this world have not been primarily intended for their own enjoyment, but rather for that of women. We can thank hypergamy for the fact that we all, regardless of gender, get to enjoy these comforts today.
Besides, hypergamy doesn’t go on forever. Usually, the impulse to find a higher quality mate stops once a woman has found a man with (what she subjectively perceives to be) an SMV 1-3 points above her own. Women stop acting on their hypergamous impulse when they feel they can’t do better. This is the most salient explanation for why divorce rates are lower among couples that marry later: The women (who in the United States initiate two-thirds of all divorces) have fewer options because they aren’t getting as many lustful glances from men as they used to.
This also means that childbearing is a major contributing factor to the curtailing of hypergamy because once a woman becomes pregnant her SMV unquestionably nosedives because she now has children (an additional cost and burden) as well as a less attractive physique than before. Let’s say a woman who has an SMV of 8 marries a man who is a 9 to whom she consequently bears a child. During and after pregnancy, her SMV will be closer to 6 and any further hypergamy would be futile for her as she already has a man three points above her. No other niner men are looking at her today like they used to before she was pregnant, but her husband (who is still a niner) will be by her side. “
Hope this is helpful
Whereas all men have a natural urge to copulate with a great variety of fertile women (because, in our evolutionary history, such behavior improved our chances of gene proliferation), women have a corresponding biological drive to have relations with the highest quality man they possible can (for the same reason) and to gain exclusive commitment from that man. Briefly put, men want a lot of women, women want one really great guy.
Men and women’s respective sexual interests are therefore perpetually at odds, and the competition is zero sum in nature; for one sexual strategy to succeed, the other must be thwarted. If women are to fulfill their reproductive goal of getting exclusive commitment from a man, the man cannot simultaneously fulfill his reproductive objective of impregnating a harem and vice versa.
Which of the two strategies prevails has varied throughout history. During certain periods and in certain areas, men were free to indulge their polygamous nature, as indeed they still are in certain contemporary societies. In the current industrialized world, however, female reproductive interests benefit the most. Polygamy is banned and monogamy is strongly encouraged, while hypergamy is not discouraged. Women are thus at liberty to fulfill their natural biological imperatives at the expense of men.
For most of human history, only a minority of men but a majority of women managed to reproduce, because a relatively smaller proportion of dominant men slept with a relatively larger proportion of the women, partly because the dominant males within a tribe tended to mate with many women but also because far more men than women suffered a violent demise.
Picture an armed conflict between two tribes. What happened to the men and what happened to the women? The men from each tribe fought each other and the losing side of males were killed, often along with their children. The women, however, were kept for mating purposes. Women who pledged eternal allegiance to her tribe, the “I would rather die than sleep with the enemy”-types, were killed. So women developed a certain willingness to (sometimes reluctantly, other times not) mate with the men who killed their husbands, fathers and brothers. This happens even today.
Monogamy later developed because it promoted superior civilizations and stabilized society. Dominant chiefs who did not hoard all the women for themselves but instead let more of his followers have wives could build a greater degree of support among a larger number of men, making his army more formidable and reducing the occurrence of internecine strife. Monogamy is also the healthiest environment in which a child can grow up (because having both a mother and a father improved the child’s security and access to resources), which meant higher rates of survival within monogamous tribes.
Both male polygamy and female hypergamy are perfectly natural and healthy preferences insofar as they have evolved over the years to better ensure the continuation of our DNA. All other things being equal, a woman who had children with the most successful and highest possible status man she could get (status and success have, admittedly, meant a variety of things over the years), had a greater chance of passing along her genes. A woman who, after first having children with one man, bore the child of another, only enjoyed a genetic advantage if the next man was of higher status.
Conversely, the more fertile women a man banged, the greater his chances of passing along his genes. The reportedly prolific lover Genghis Khan, for instance, who spent decades bedding the wives and daughters of the men he subjugated and killed, as well as building a harem of thousands of young women, was perhaps history’s most successful man in terms of reproduction: A 2003 study headed by Chris Tyler-Smith found that 0.5% of all men alive are direct descendants of the great Mongol invader of lands and wombs.
Whereas men’s natural desire for promiscuity is curbed through institutional and social reinforcement mechanisms (marriage, religious edicts, disapproval), female hypergamy is somewhat more tolerated in post-industrial societies. If you want to understand more about why this is the case, read The Rational Male by Rollo Tomassi.
Hypergamy is also the reason why men and women love differently. The abovementioned Tomassi was the first to introduce me to this idea: Only men are truly able to love a mate unconditionally. Women are not.
When discussing some of the topics in this book with a friend of mine, he asked “Shouldn’t men find women who love them for who they are instead of what they are? One who doesn’t care if you are rich or poor. One who will stay with you through thick and thin?”. This is a sentiment shared by a lot of good men and I admire the ingenuousness with which he asked the question. It reflects my friend’s propensity for unconditional love and his projecting of that same capacity onto women.
But a woman’s love is always conditional. When a man says he want a woman to love him for who he is, the type of love he is referring to is the kind only his mother can give him. Your mother is the only woman who can love you unconditionally.
In our brutish past, a man who fell out of love with and subsequently left his aging and bloating wife would jeopardize the survival of their common offspring. So nature left a fail-safe mechanism in place to ensure that men didn’t leave their wives even when they were no longer as aesthetically pleasing as in their youth: unconditional love. This is one reason, incidentally, that although high SMV men often take on younger mistresses later in life (because they are hotter) they still profess undying love and devotion for their wives. They aren’t usually lying when they say this.
On the other hand, a woman who remained in love with a man who had, say, become a cripple and lost all his provisioning ability (the male equivalent to a hysterectomy in women) would severely limit her chances of passing along her genes. Women, or rather, women’s genes, could not afford to be irrationally devoted to a man without the capacity to feed and protect his children. And this is why nature left in place an inverse fail-safe for women: conditional love.
The truth is, all female love is conditional in one way or another and a man can never separate who he is from what he is. Women marry men either on the basis of already manifested accomplishments or the potential for such accomplishments. A woman who falls in love with and marries young to a man with a promising future is taking a chance on him, but if he turns out to be a listless couch potato later in life, she will fall out of love with him.
Now, before you start disparaging women for being so calculating and pragmatic in matters of the heart, remember that a) hypergamy is a perfectly rational reproductive strategy in light of the greater physical responsibilities and risks women have in terms of childbearing and b) it is actually great for civilization. Women are looking to get the most resource-rich men they can and that’s why we have cell-phones, symphonies and self-driving cars. Guys who didn’t look like Brad Pitt still wanted to find a high quality mate, which meant they needed to bring something other than looks to the table. So they went out and created more resources for themselves (and others).
Since women invariably flock to the highest quality males this pushes men to continually strive for improvements. Improving themselves, improving the world, creating useful tools, crafting beautiful works of art, writing moving songs and so on.
Someone (I don’t know exactly who) once remarked that a man guaranteed a steady flow of blowjobs from supermodels for the rest of his life would be perfectly content to live in a cardboard box. While that statement is no doubt an exaggeration, it illustrates the point that the amenities men have created in this world have not been primarily intended for their own enjoyment, but rather for that of women. We can thank hypergamy for the fact that we all, regardless of gender, get to enjoy these comforts today.
Besides, hypergamy doesn’t go on forever. Usually, the impulse to find a higher quality mate stops once a woman has found a man with (what she subjectively perceives to be) an SMV 1-3 points above her own. Women stop acting on their hypergamous impulse when they feel they can’t do better. This is the most salient explanation for why divorce rates are lower among couples that marry later: The women (who in the United States initiate two-thirds of all divorces) have fewer options because they aren’t getting as many lustful glances from men as they used to.
This also means that childbearing is a major contributing factor to the curtailing of hypergamy because once a woman becomes pregnant her SMV unquestionably nosedives because she now has children (an additional cost and burden) as well as a less attractive physique than before. Let’s say a woman who has an SMV of 8 marries a man who is a 9 to whom she consequently bears a child. During and after pregnancy, her SMV will be closer to 6 and any further hypergamy would be futile for her as she already has a man three points above her. No other niner men are looking at her today like they used to before she was pregnant, but her husband (who is still a niner) will be by her side. “
Hope this is helpful
