Female Mind

Hypergamy is her tendency to date or marry ‘up’. She wants the best, richest, highest status guy she can get, they say. But science disagrees.

One of the memes of the manosphere is that the women of Western society are ardently in pursuit of the wealthiest, highest status man they can get. The qualities women are said to prize most of all include:

• Wealth
• Status
• Looks
• Fame
• Other forms of power
  

Manosphere pundits call this phenomenon ‘hypergamy’.

‘Hypergamy’ originally described the practice of marriage into a higher social or economic class by women. The manosphere has expanded that definition to describe women’s desire for and tendency to pursue men who are their ‘betters’ in some way or another for hook ups and relationships, as well as marriage.

I’m not a fan of the manosphere alpha-beta redefinition, but I have no qualms with its expanded definition of hypergamy. Seems like a natural fit for the term, especially in our present sexual/romantic environment.

So, let’s discuss.

Is hypergamy bad for you?

How big are its effects?

And, how must you adapt?

Note from Chase: this is the first article by Varoon Rajah, who runs our podcast series. Varoon’s launching this book review series, where he aims to review a new book each month related to dating, attraction, relationships, or psychology. Here’s Varoon...

Why Him? Why Her? is a book by Helen Fisher which ultimately suggests who you fall in love with (for GC readers – who men and women are attracted to) is powerfully influenced by who you are. Or, in other words, your personality is influenced from a very young age by your inherent temperament in addition to developed character traits. While it is commonly thought that your experiences in life shape who you are, what is not as clear to many is how a person’s inherent biology ultimately shapes them, as well as guides their choices and decisions well through their life – including the domain of relationships, love, and romance.

Helen briefly discusses this distinction – personality based on experiences and character versus personality based on biology and temperament – early on in her book:

“Your character traits stem from you experiences. Your childhood games; your parents’ interests and values; how people in your community express love and hate; what relatives and friends regard as polite, dangerous or exciting; how they worship; what they sing; when they laugh; what they do to make a living and relax – these and innumerable other cultural forces combine to build your unique set of character traits.

The balance of your personality is your temperament, all of the biological based tendencies you have inherited, traits that emerge early childhood to produce your consistent patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving… Temperament is the “I am,” the foundation of who you are. Curiosity; creativity; novelty seeking; compassion; cautiousness; competitiveness: to some degree, you inherit these and many other aspects of your disposition.”

Fisher, Helen. (2009). Why Him? Why Her?: finding real love by understanding your personality type (pp. 3-4). New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

And thus, we all have an inherent disposition and behavior that shows up to others. You might imagine where and how this is useful with your woman life – knowing the nature of that cute girl you’re about to approach or just approached, that cute girl you just met at 2 AM in a nightclub, that cute girl you’re about to go on a date with, and maybe even that cute girl you’re already dating or in a long term relationship with – has absolutely massive implications as to how you show up to her, how she shows up to you, and how elements that you present to each other serve or don’t serve to bring you two into getting together.

And knowing this – knowing your target and who she is – can enable the seeking of girls most suitable to partner with you, as well as cater your own experience with her to manage her needs, attractions, and repulsions.

And with that, we dive into this exploration of where experience meets biology.

content="If a girl doesn’t think you’re in control, her attraction and respect for you suffer. Yet, you needn’t be the uptight in-control guy to show her this.">

That sounds like a power-mad, insecure, control-freak title for an article, doesn’t it?

“She always needs to think you’re in control.”

Pretty outdated, right?

Especially in a world in which more men consider ‘masculinity’ a bad thing than a good thing:

In truth, we get plenty of guys who stumble upon Girls Chase articles (and mine in particular) who object to just this advice:

• “Why does the guy have to do everything?”
• “Why do I have to be in control?”
• “Why can’t women just take the lead sometimes?”

But this article isn’t so much about WHY you must lead, nor much about HOW to lead.

If you want to know more about that subject, check these articles out:

• When Women Test Men
• The Real Reason Many Men Can’t Get a Girl
• A Failed Relationship is a Failure of Leadership
• Do You Really Need to Learn Game to Get Girls?
• How to Be Decisive

Rather, this article is about keeping up appearances, and not giving a girl the impression that the guy she’s with is floating along, doesn’t have a clue, or is abdicating leadership of the courtship... whether to her, to Mother Nature, or to fate, luck, hope, or chance.

She always needs to think you are in control.

Because if she doesn’t, she ain’t hanging around.

A few hours ago I was in a girlfriend’s apartment with her and some of my girlfriend’s friends. I showered there, and when I finished my shower I left the bathroom in just a towel, then returned to dry my hair.

After my girlfriend’s friends had left, she told me one of her friends had seen me walking back and forth wrapped in my towel and proceeded to make an unpleasant face, then look away.

Now, if I was younger I might’ve been inclined to take this reaction at face value and assume there must be something wrong with my body, or maybe I don’t look that good in a towel and ought to stay covered up all the time. I’d feel self-conscious and take something like this as reason for doubt.

However, at this point, I know I’m in decent shape... I have some muscle, and little fat. I have arguably the best figure right now I’ve ever had. And I’ve had plenty of girls tell me I have a good body. So I know that “Ugh!” reaction likely doesn’t mean, “Ew, he’s so ugly.”

Instead, I figured this likely happened because that friend is devoutly religious, and her reaction was her forbidding herself to suffer impure thoughts / temptation. I told my girlfriend this, and she said that was her read as well (then asked me if I could stay dressed around her more conservative friends).

It seemed like a simple little interaction, but it highlighted an important point:

You must be careful not to take what women say or do at face value.

Recently, a commenter asked a question about my article “12 Traits All Boring, Unsexy Nice Guys Have in Common” – he wanted to know, specifically, why these traits, beliefs, and behaviors are so boring to women:

“Chase, I read your article about the 12 traits all boring, unsexy nice guys have. How do these traits in and of itself make a person boring? How does things like believing in karma or watching pundits make you boring? Is it possible that you could write about things men do that make them seem boring to women during conversation or in their actions? I don’t think you have that sort of list on this site.”

In case it’s been a while since you read that article, here’s a quick recap of boring nice guy traits:

1. He doesn’t mind waiting... and waiting...
2. He wants points for being ‘nice’
3. He gets upset when the world doesn’t play fair
4. He believes in ‘justice’, ‘karma’, or ‘just desserts’
5. He consumes a LOT of media
6. He thinks women are victims of men
7. He is extra soft, friendly, and gentle with women
8. He doesn’t have any interests or passions
9. He can’t understand why women want bad boys
10. He thinks women don’t REALLY like sex
11. He believes he must promise relationships to get sex
12. He can’t believe any girl could want him JUST for sex
    

Here’s a thought though; read that list. Imagine a man with those 12 traits. Would you like to have a friend like that? Or would you better prefer a friend who is the opposite of that?:

• A guy with a lot to do who doesn’t wait around for long
• A guy who, if he is nice, expects nothing back for it
• A guy who shrugs if the world doesn’t play fair, then gets back to work
• A guy who believes you only get what you get, no ‘karma’ about it
• A guy who isn’t overly plugged into popular media
  
• A guy who thinks women and men complement each other
• A guy who is playful and flirtatious with women
• A guy with several real interests and passions
• A guy who knows exactly why women like bad boys... he is one!
• A guy who knows women love sex (or at least they love it with him)
• A guy who doesn’t give a woman relationship until well after their first sex
  
• A guy who believes women want to take advantage of him sexually
  

Man, that’s a couple of totally different human beings right there, isn’t it? Do you know which guy you want to be friends with? I know which guy I want to be friends with. It ain’t the nice guy.

Why do those ‘nice guy’ traits make a man so unappealing though?

In a comment on my article about unclear value to a long-term girlfriend, a reader named Xander remarked as follows:

“Can you believe that because of this I can never get a girl. I’m good looking guy, and I’ve been successful on college. I don’t write this because I think look and post bachelor title will get me girls, but because I try to seduce them, and because of this qualities they don’t like me. I’m not arrogant and have a lot of male friends. But girls don’t like me, and wouldn’t go on date with me to save their lives. Problem is that girls with lower ambitions wouldn’t go with be because of attainability, and girls who are a bit ambitious also don’t want, because they want someone less ambitious who they control and feel dominant around him. The biggest problem is my success at college, and my normal ambition to be good at my job and further education. So I can’t be their boyfriend because I equally want to provide me and them, or their lover because girls here clever guys treat like they don’t have a cock. Global crisis hit us and a lot of girls are in found provider mode, and they are too picky and only wants to date man who is completely same as they in all possible things. And as you know it’s impossible, they find one provider and eventually marry him. I realized that being good at science is one way ticket to auto-rejection.

Reading your article I realized that in all world women want compatible man, but here it is more than dramatic. Those are modern times and I think that women should be more flexible.

My problem is because I tried everything I could and did’t get results because of their ego. I know I shouldn’t but I started to really hate women because of their ego who is bigger than Mount Everest.

At one point I gave up from seduction, but this article tells me that maybe there is a chance. Please tell me Chase are there more things I can do or change so I could get better results? If you know some psychological books that treat problems about ego please tell me. Is there something in seduction I should focus more? I focused on social calibration and got a lot of male friends, but women still don’t like me because maybe I’m not calibrated enough, and for sure because they don’t like anyone who has evan a little bit value than they. Every answers, comments and critics are welcome.”

While long-term value is definitely an important part of whether a woman is willing to stick around in a long-term relationship with you, its effect on actually lining up dates with women and getting them into bed is... murkier. That’s because it’s quite hard to sniff out your real, actual long-term value from a mere five or ten minutes of conversation.

So, while it might sound like Xander’s problem is the opposite that discussed in this article, where we talked about men who say women don’t want them because they aren’t valuable enough, in many ways it is in fact the same problem:

The man is focused on himself, the man... instead of on her, the woman.

I see a lot of guys starting out who devote themselves to trying to hook up with girls who are, to a more experienced eye, clearly just bad leads: they’re women who are willing to continue to hang around a guy, and continue to let him hope he has a chance with them (whether because they want the attention, or because he is too blinded by hope to pay attention to the clear signals they’re sending him).

The sad thing about distractions like this is that a girl like this will literally waste your time – you could be off meeting women who legitimately like you and find you attractive (and would very much like a roll in the hay with you), but instead you squander your entire outing on a woman who, for all practical purposes, really presents very little value in exchange for the time you spend on her.

Now, it’s all well and good for you to make female friends and get to know women better, and, particularly as a beginner-to-intermediate, you should absolutely be doing this (in particular, make friends with the demographics of women you’d most like to date, so you can empathize with and relate to these sorts of women more easily).

However, one thing you should not be doing is confusing women who have no intention of shacking up with you for women worth your persistence and sticking around for.

That in mind, here are fifteen (15) signs a girl will waste your time... and that you should probably cut bait and move onto the next girl.