Hypergamy:

Stella

@ubiquitousnewt

Hypergamy is typical and advantageous. It is not the preference itself that causes problems but the miscalibration of expectations. People often overestimate what is realistically within reach in a stratified mating market. People can only select from the distribution that is actually available to them, not the idealised distribution they imagine. Both sexes tend to inflate their own mate value because a degree of self delusion is psychologically adaptive. The upper tail of male traits is mathematically thin. Very few men are wealthy, brilliant or unusually stable. The upper tail of female traits is also thin. Extremely attractive women who also possess warmth, stable affect, and the traits needed for long term pair bonding are rare. Attractiveness itself follows a normal curve, and the clustering of additional personality traits makes the upper tail even narrower. Hypergamy functions well when people understand these biological and statistical constraints. The disappointment people experience comes from overestimating what is possible, not from the preference itself. This also explains why certain people become intensely abusive towards others online when they signal physical, educational or socioeconomic success. The individuals who express the most anger at others or their lot in life tend to come from two overlapping categories. One is people with narcissistic traits, who hold inflated self assessments and react intensely when reality conflicts with their internal rating. The other is individuals with lower underlying mate value, who face scarcity, competition and chronic rejection. These two profiles reinforce each other. Narcissistic self inflation masks low mate value, and low mate value deepens narcissistic defensiveness. The anger is not ideological. It is a psychological reaction to the collision between perceived entitlement and statistical constraints. If you are pleased, content and happy with your life and your mate, it means something simple but powerful. You won at least some valuable traits in the genetic lottery. Enough intelligence, enough stability, enough attractiveness, enough pro social temperament to place you in a functional part of the mating distribution. However, that positioning is largely a matter of chance rather than earned merit. This is why a little humility is appropriate. Many of the traits that make life and relationships go smoothly are not achievements per se. They are endowments. People who feel satisfied in love and secure in their partnerships are often standing on foundations they did not build themselves. Recognising this takes the moral heat out of the discussion. It frames success in mating for what it really is: an interaction between luck, biology and the structure of the distribution itself. ----- "No son is ever going to look around the McMansion, look at mom, and say: "I wish you had settled for less, been less predatory." "