"Assortative mating" definitely happens. There's a big correlation between what different people value. So some people can get lots of dates and interest, and others very little. Wise people figure this out. If you're on the lower side of the desirability spectrum and you want a committed relationship, you'll likely have to "settle" for someone who's also low on their spectrum. So throughout life you both will constantly meet people who are more attractive than the one you have. However, bonds grow over time and if you have good memories with a partner, you will at an emotional (non-transactional) level, feel something for that person that is based partly on various little quirks that have no inherent value. One thing you can value in your partner is their tendency and commitment not to be thinking of "trading up", and that while there can be sufficient justifications for a break-up, you will try hard to work through problems. And they can value that in you. Our culture and perhaps biology incline us in this direction, as typically couples had multiple children together, and it really helps if you really want to be with that co-parent rather than judging it to be in your narrow self-interest. Thinking deeply about just why someone values you and why you value them seems like a recipe for constant dissatisfaction.
I heard a tale of a woman with only one arm who was pleased that a dating relationship was going well, but then she discovered that he had a fetish for people with one arm. Horrified, she dumped him. That seems like failing to take advantage of good fortune. If he's a decent guy, he would come to be connected to her and value her for much more than that. You might think of being valued for youth as in the same category. It sets the stage for shared experiences that build more lasting bonds.
Agree with the first half and disagree with the latter half - but think that reflects different assumptions about what predicts a lasting bond. Sounds like you buy more into the arranged marriage is just as good as love marriage idea, which I think is reasonable, but I think we can do better than that. I think that knowing someone is only or mainly with you for some shallow factor or even worse for some trait you will surely lose is, in my opinion, a reasonable cause for concern. I think preferring to find someone who doesn't primarily find you attractive for some disability you have is beyond reasonable. I like your point about valuing in the other a commitment not to trade up at the first opportunity but rather being willing to work through issues. I also agree that over time your partner becomes higher value *to you* in ways that don't reflect some objective mate value and that makes it difficult to find someone who's better for you specifically.
You wrote "Sounds like you buy more into the arranged marriage is just as good as love marriage idea, which I think is reasonable, but I think we can do better than that." It is not "just as good" and can be tragic, but people will likely end up happier when choosing a partner themselves in giving more weight to the factors that are typically taken into account when marriages are arranged.
Yes, I agree with the last sentence for sure. I think people actually realize this as they age which is likely part of why very early marriages have slightly higher divorce rates (among other reasons) - people start to realize their mum and grandma had a point lol arranged marriages get around the issue of young people being stupid by outsourcing that decision
I would absolutely expect my man to leave me if he found someone 20% better who would take him. Or even 10% better. I just think the likelihood of that happening are low enough that I don't spend time stressing about it. Yes, there are people 20% better, but not many that are 20% better AND that would be interested in him. Same goes the other way around.
I think the trick is that you find someone who really would not easily be able to find anyone 10% better than you, and that you would not easily find anyone 10% better than them, on whatever your respective desired mix of metrics are. If you and your partner each have some fairly unusual demands or desires, it makes that much easier. Because if you fill them and most people don't, then you don't have to worry about much competition. Whereas if your partner has ZERO unusual desires/demands, and just basically cares that you're generally pretty, kind, and smart in a way that's pretty basic and common...well that would make me feel more insecure. This goes to your post the other day about offering traits that most people don't like/value, but a minority of people REALLY like. I think you can feel fairly confident about not being replaced if you're an outlier on some measure that not everyone likes, but your partner values.
I think people don't want to be valued for beauty because it is an absolute guarantee that everyone will be ugly someday, and probably for many decades. Unless they die very young. So that would be a very dumb thing to feel secure about, if it was all you had to keep a partner with.
Last, although everyone thinks they WANT to have total security about not being left, they really don't. It's a human instinct to want to lock down anything valuable and keep it safe and sound and away from competition, we all desire that. And then we all, quite quickly after obtaining said security, immediately take the previously-precious thing we've secured and take it for granted. It's good to have at least a LITTLE insecurity about being left, otherwise you will just be very bored and uninterested, and your brain will focus its attention on securing the next valuable asset or the next achievement or challenge. Everyone does that, it's completely natural brain biology, and it's not avoidable even if you try to resist. It's a waste of energy for your brain to allocate emotions and attention towards anything it has total security and certainty about. There's a balance between the crazy-making high drama of relationship insecurity and the dull deadness of utter security.
"I would absolutely expect my man to leave me if he found someone 20% better who would take him. Or even 10% better. I just think the likelihood of that happening are low enough that I don't spend time stressing about it. Yes, there are people 20% better, but not many that are 20% better AND that would be interested in him. Same goes the other way around."
I sort of agree... but not entirely. I think it depends what you mean by "better". Over time obviously bonds between people strengthen, your history together has value, you come to love traits in the other person that are not objectively "high mate value" etc. And so I wouldn't expect to leave or be left because you met someone slightly higher in objective mate value who was interested in you... but if they met someone who was much better suited to *being their partner* even after taking into account all the shared history etc. then I think it's reasonable to leave... and I wouldn't want to keep someone I loved trapped in a less fulfilling relationship either. Also if you have kids with someone, that alone makes them a better partner for you in a way that's unique to you and not valued by anyone else in the dating market. So for all those reasons I think your point that "it's unlikely anyways" gets more true over time (supposing neither of you change in such a way that you're no longer good partners to one another, which of course also happens frequently, and I think breaking up in those situations is the right thing to do as well). And of course leaving for someone new has transaction costs and uncertainty since you don't know how well the new relationship will work until you leave the old one... all factors that promote stability. The fact that these transaction costs and uncertainty exist are the reason why its uncommon for people in happy relationships to leave their partner for someone else, normally you need to actually be unhappy to think this is worth doing, even if you do meet some people who could've been potentially better partners. (I don't know if you know the Agnes Callard story but she's one of the only people I've heard of who left what she felt was a very happy and functional marriage because she fell for someone else.) All this said, while I think there are many situations in which breaking up is reasonable, some which involve meeting someone who you didn't expect to meet, I certainly wouldn't want to feel that my partner is actively looking for those opportunities.
As for your point about feeling a little insecure in the relationship being healthy - I totally agree, but I phrase it slightly differently as: recognizing that the relationship is not unconditional is healthy. I think believing you're in an unconditional relationship incentivizes bad behavior, laziness etc. and in some sense can actually allow you to treat your partner *more* transactionally, since I think being treated non-transactionally is a condition for most people in their primary partnership (if that makes sense!)
Totally agree with all this. Unwinding a relationship....ESPECIALLY a marriage and REALLY DEFINITELY ESPECIALLY a marriage with children has huge costs. Which is why I think someone would really have to be quite a lot better...probably more than 20% even (though 20% better is actually quite a lot).
And to clarify, I didn't mean "better" on some objective criterion that is the same for everyone, because it most certainly is not. Some things are pretty universal -- i.e. most people prefer someone who enjoys humor to someone who does not, and most people prefer someone better looking than worse, etc. But people have all kinds of quirks that are highly attractive and/or critical to one person that would be considered an active disqualifier for someone else. Religiosity would be a pretty obvious one. But there are lots of things...interests, lifestyles, etc.
Most married couples really end up more alike to each other than they are to 90% or more of other people...there's a lot of matching that goes on. It's why when you see a mis-matched couple, it usually really stands out and people will comment on it, because it's so unusual, they always wonder how on earth did those two end up together??
Fully agree with you that "unconditional love" incentivizes terrible behavior and no one should want it or give it.
from above: "I think it depends what you mean by "better". Over time obviously bonds between people strengthen, your history together has value, you come to love traits in the other person that are not objectively "high mate value" etc. And so I wouldn't expect to leave or be left because you met someone slightly higher in objective mate value who was interested in you... but if they met someone who was much better suited to *being their partner* even after taking into account all the shared history etc. then I think it's reasonable to leave"
I agree with problematizing the concept of “better”, but your reply still accepts a concept of “objective mate value” which implies a quantitative ordinal ranking of human quality is possible, even if you don’t think it’s the sole determinant of relationship decisions and you leave room for subjectivity to grow over time. Whereas I would go much further and say the entire concept of “objective mate value” is silly.
I just mean the value set by the market, analogous to how prices are set as a function of demand and supply - this isn’t about deep moral value. But it’s pretty obvious that some people are considered broadly more desirable as romantic partners than other people - that’s what I’m referring to when I say “objective mate value”.
To elaborate a bit, I agree with you that in a relationship you grow to love idiosyncratic qualities in your partner that other people might not notice or care about. And you can draw a contrast between those qualities and other good qualities they possess that are more obvious or broadly appealing. I just think it’s misleading to try and mathematically formalize that distinction with conceptual tools like “market value” imported from economics. Since, as you write, relationships are not transactional, any attempt to gain insight into relationships with conceptual tools designed for transactional commercial exchanges is bound to fail.
20% of whatever mix of values and attributes one of the partners likes. Which will be different for everyone. But I can easily imagine exactly what type of woman my guy would think was significantly better than me. It's not some objective scale, it depends on whatever a person likes. For example I do not enjoy receiving poems (unless they're funny), so a guy who insists upon writing me serious poems is worse than a guy who does not, because then I have to pretend to be interested and amazed by said poems and I don't want to have to pretend that. But plenty of other women would love to receive love poems and think a guy who writes them is better.
Thanks for the reply. I think the unspoken assumption you’re making is that people have an ideal partner in mind and then choose the person they can find who is closest to that ideal. Then, if they find someone else who matches the ideal better, they are tempted to make the switch. I don’t think real relationships work that way though. People don’t have a fixed ideal. Thought and desire are dynamic. When you fall in love with someone, you come to want them, specifically, as a wholistic person rather than an amalgamation of traits. That includes their qualities and characteristics that weren’t part of what you previously thought you wanted but that you now find you just can’t do without.
I somewhat agree with you, but also I think there is a mix of traits people like, and that they DO switch if they find someone with a better mix. Now how willing they are to switch depends on how invested they are in the existing one and how painful or not it is to get out. If you’re just like dating in college or something, easy to jump ship because you perceive a better deal elsewhere. Not so much if you’re married with kids….someone would have to be really much significantly better, on at least one very important trait or a multiple traits. And I actually think 20% is quite a lot, by the way, like that’s a very big jump.
The reason I can’t fully go along with you is that I have just known way too many people — mostly men, though I don’t know why — who have a string of relationships where every woman is almost a clone of the one before. Like to the point where it’s weird and people comment and joke about it. And I don’t just mean a Leo DeCaprio type who keeps trading in for a new 22 year old model, I mean guys who clearly have a specific type because they’ve had 3 long-term girlfriends/wives over a 30 year span, and every one is a very weirdly specific type. So some people very clearly DO have ideals.
If all their partners are pretty similar, it doesn’t sound like these men are “trading up” each time for a new partner who better matches what they want. More likely their relationships just don’t last for whatever reason, and they tend to go for the same sort of person for each new one because that’s what they like and that’s what they’re used to.
> Also if you have kids with someone, that alone makes them a better partner for you in a way that's unique to you and not valued by anyone else in the dating market.
Unless you have a reasonable chance to have more kids with someone else, leaving your former partners and their own future partners, if any, stuck raising _your_ kids.
The premise of this whole conversation is that most people are optimizers; I think, though, that lots of people are satisficers, whose choices are not well modeled by this kind of analysis. Most marriages easily survive the competition of people 20% better who are willing to take up with one or the other spouse, because people are afraid to leave what they know, and they are generally happy with it - even setting aside the moral commitment most people feel to their marriage vows.
What breaks up marriages is not the appearance of a 20% better candidate. Rather, a partner starts an affair (often with someone less attractive to them than their spouse, but more novel), with no intention whatsoever to leave their marriage, gets caught, and the spouse leaves them due to anger and betrayal.
I agree with you actually. And I'm more of a satisficer myself, though I seem to have become more of an optimizer with age...which I don't think is necessarily a good thing and is probably just because I have way more resources now to carry out my optimizing. But you're right, every time in the past that I wanted to cheat or broke up with someone for someone else, it was just for the novelty/excitement factor and not bc the other person was better, and in fact they were usually obviously worse. But that's part of why I'm saying that getting too comfortable/secure is a bad thing, because it makes the desirability of novelty just some some excitement much more alluring.
So I guess I agree that people don't usually cheat/leave for someone better, though I still think it's probably a good thing to assume it could happen, and to maintain at least *a little* fear of wanting that not to happen. Just to keep you from too much complacency and bc it's a bad incentive to have total security and an assumption of unconditional love, as Regan wrote.
Missing in the conversation are children. A major consideration is whether someone I'm partnering with would be someone who I want to mother/father my children. This includes generic, temperamental and cultural components. Simply the desire to want or avoid having children is an important factor.
This is actually healthy as it forces you to take a third person view of a person: how will they father my kids. If you think someone will be a bad father/mother, they're unlikely to be a good long term partner. It forces long term view: if we mismatch on life decisions, we probably shouldn't waste years on something that will implode. It moves things away from superficial looks while retaining some reasonable conditions around health and fertility. If you both want kids and think you're partner would be a good parent, your children provide a decades long joint project.
Happy couples I know with or without kids have long running joint passions. There needs to be some sort of purpose in the relationship. The relationship needs telos. Children are normie telos. The rare couple can perhaps be each others' purpose, but most people will best see their partner as a companion towards that purpose.
If I take 10 random women from some narrow cohort to which I belong (same employer, same college, same subdivision) it is highly likely that I can find one that will feel like a soulmate, "just made for me".
It won't be instant. I'll probably like 4 a little bit, but find one better, and some months in a relationship will mold both of us into soulmate material.
A decently workable marriage will then build upon that. At that point, think that some other woman is 20% better is most likely a delusion caused by some recent trouble in the marriage.
“It doesn’t feel core to most people’s sense of self, and so being “loved” for your beauty doesn’t provide the feeling of deep acceptance and understanding that being loved for (what you see as) your more defining traits does.”
What’s a more defining trait than your appearance?! It’s how everyone in the world recognizes you. It’s your external look you show the world. It’s what changes with time as you age that everyone can immediately identify. It’s what’s literally used in your identification documents.
Furthermore, women being judged on beauty is akin to men being judged and selected for height. Yes the former is more predominant than the latter but the idea is the same and I would’ve thought be relatable to a woman, or at least understandable.
And everything fades, not just physical appearance. Mental capacities (recall, intelligence, reflexes, etc.), physical strength, abilities, and even height. They all fade with time, albeit at a different rate. All this to say, if one of the 2 sexes uses beauty (although it’s technically youth which is a marker for fertility that we’re actually talking about, no?) as a primary trait to filter potential partners with, it isn’t THAT farfetched compared to all other potential traits.
Of course selecting on height is analogous to selecting on beauty, or rather is a special case of selecting on beauty… I thought that was clear given I talked about “shallow traits” and only used beauty as a particular example to respond to the Richard comment. Same would go for wealth as well.
As for people feeling that their appearance is defining of “who they really are” I don’t really know how to respond because that seems so obvious to me. I think very few people feel that how they look is defining of “who they are” in the same way that their personality characteristics or values define them.
Sure, even our personality and intelligence based traits are less stable than we might feel they are in the moment, but that doesn’t imply that they fade in the predicable way beauty does. And the fact that our identity is not clearly stable in this way doesn’t imply that you should be neutral to what your partner primarily values you for (for all the reasons I describe in the piece). And no, I wasn’t using beauty as a short hand for youth… youth is related to beauty of course but I was more imagining a person selecting among people of similar ages on their relative attractiveness. Obviously a woman also wouldn’t want to marry a guy they felt would want to leave them as soon as they aged either though…
Well we should be discussing youth over beauty because beneath the surface it’s youth that men are selecting for, not so much beauty. This for the simple fact that beauty isn’t a marker for fertility like youth is, but I digress.
As far as I can tell from all the above, the thing that makes beauty different from the other traits is that it fades earlier than the others and I can understand women’s apprehension about it. I can make the case that your appearance is as much or more a defining characteristic as personality or values. When someone sees you walking down the street and they recognize Regan, what’s more defining of you than that? They wouldn’t be able to recognize your honesty, intelligence or your accomplishments. But they know it’s you by a glance. How’s that not very defining of you then?!
I think the politically correct answer is that one wants people/partners to value them for the whole package (appearance, strengths both physical and temperamental, intelligence, honesty, kindness, all their values, etc.). But let’s not act like one of these traits (beauty) is so unlike any of the others because it might make some people uncomfortable due to its half-life. As I said men get judged on height (which is an ever narrower subset of beauty as you said, so worse maybe?!) and while some men complain, that’s more because we can do much less to impact height than women can influence beauty. But those men shouldn’t complain either as it’s a marker for something important to women. It is what it is.
Just height, or more like ability to fight physically? This is natural and I don’t think there’s any way around it. If you don’t like being judged as inferior to another man just because he can mop the floor with you, the response to be expected is “Go tell him to his face”. And the only reason women are not usually judged this way is that men insulate them from it.
Idk do men perceive height as a defining trait they want to be valued and admired for? Of course using youth and beauty as a primary trait to filter for a potential partner is UNDERSTANDABLE to women. It’s just a huge turn off. Even to young and beautiful women. Because it’s shallow af.
I have always wondered why a human athlete who sacrifices everything and focuses their life on winning a gold medal or whatever is held up as a hero to be emulated, but a human who sacrifices everything and focuses her life on her looks is shallow and vain. (The latter is typically, but not exclusively, a "her"....)
I suppose the implied answer is that sport is seen as embodying moral qualities that looking hot does not, but I've seen enough Athletes Behaving Badly to question whether this truly has any basis in fact.
Yeah, I think you have a point … we clearly value super models but we don’t think they’re particularly morally valuable whereas we do sometimes imply that for athletes. I think the assumption is that while being an elite athlete obviously requires luck, good genetics etc that it nevertheless is extremely hard work whereas the hitting peak beauty also requires a lot of luck, but the max amount of work you need to put in is still not that much. And so there’s not much to emulate.
Came to this post late. Empirical evidence seems to confirm what most people might think of as blindingly obvious - that some men and some women are much luckier (or savvier) in love than others. Of course most people do - in the course of a lifetime – experience some kind of reasonably long-term relationship anyway so one might say it all works out in the end. But some evolutionary psychologists - like Professor David Buss – believe that modernity is possibly creating a runaway form of sexual competition that is actually exacerbating disadvantage to the less-lucky-in-love. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
Thanks for the interesting post. I think there are two aspects that you're not directly considering which are important when choosing a partner:
1) psychological traits. We don't choose partners rationally, objectively assessing their look and character, we choose people whose personalities satisfy some of our deep psychological needs. Often they end up being somewhat similar to one of our parents. This explains why there are many abusive relationships, for example
"Assortative mating" definitely happens. There's a big correlation between what different people value. So some people can get lots of dates and interest, and others very little. Wise people figure this out. If you're on the lower side of the desirability spectrum and you want a committed relationship, you'll likely have to "settle" for someone who's also low on their spectrum. So throughout life you both will constantly meet people who are more attractive than the one you have. However, bonds grow over time and if you have good memories with a partner, you will at an emotional (non-transactional) level, feel something for that person that is based partly on various little quirks that have no inherent value. One thing you can value in your partner is their tendency and commitment not to be thinking of "trading up", and that while there can be sufficient justifications for a break-up, you will try hard to work through problems. And they can value that in you. Our culture and perhaps biology incline us in this direction, as typically couples had multiple children together, and it really helps if you really want to be with that co-parent rather than judging it to be in your narrow self-interest. Thinking deeply about just why someone values you and why you value them seems like a recipe for constant dissatisfaction.
I heard a tale of a woman with only one arm who was pleased that a dating relationship was going well, but then she discovered that he had a fetish for people with one arm. Horrified, she dumped him. That seems like failing to take advantage of good fortune. If he's a decent guy, he would come to be connected to her and value her for much more than that. You might think of being valued for youth as in the same category. It sets the stage for shared experiences that build more lasting bonds.
Agree with the first half and disagree with the latter half - but think that reflects different assumptions about what predicts a lasting bond. Sounds like you buy more into the arranged marriage is just as good as love marriage idea, which I think is reasonable, but I think we can do better than that. I think that knowing someone is only or mainly with you for some shallow factor or even worse for some trait you will surely lose is, in my opinion, a reasonable cause for concern. I think preferring to find someone who doesn't primarily find you attractive for some disability you have is beyond reasonable. I like your point about valuing in the other a commitment not to trade up at the first opportunity but rather being willing to work through issues. I also agree that over time your partner becomes higher value *to you* in ways that don't reflect some objective mate value and that makes it difficult to find someone who's better for you specifically.
You wrote "Sounds like you buy more into the arranged marriage is just as good as love marriage idea, which I think is reasonable, but I think we can do better than that." It is not "just as good" and can be tragic, but people will likely end up happier when choosing a partner themselves in giving more weight to the factors that are typically taken into account when marriages are arranged.
Yes, I agree with the last sentence for sure. I think people actually realize this as they age which is likely part of why very early marriages have slightly higher divorce rates (among other reasons) - people start to realize their mum and grandma had a point lol arranged marriages get around the issue of young people being stupid by outsourcing that decision
I would absolutely expect my man to leave me if he found someone 20% better who would take him. Or even 10% better. I just think the likelihood of that happening are low enough that I don't spend time stressing about it. Yes, there are people 20% better, but not many that are 20% better AND that would be interested in him. Same goes the other way around.
I think the trick is that you find someone who really would not easily be able to find anyone 10% better than you, and that you would not easily find anyone 10% better than them, on whatever your respective desired mix of metrics are. If you and your partner each have some fairly unusual demands or desires, it makes that much easier. Because if you fill them and most people don't, then you don't have to worry about much competition. Whereas if your partner has ZERO unusual desires/demands, and just basically cares that you're generally pretty, kind, and smart in a way that's pretty basic and common...well that would make me feel more insecure. This goes to your post the other day about offering traits that most people don't like/value, but a minority of people REALLY like. I think you can feel fairly confident about not being replaced if you're an outlier on some measure that not everyone likes, but your partner values.
I think people don't want to be valued for beauty because it is an absolute guarantee that everyone will be ugly someday, and probably for many decades. Unless they die very young. So that would be a very dumb thing to feel secure about, if it was all you had to keep a partner with.
Last, although everyone thinks they WANT to have total security about not being left, they really don't. It's a human instinct to want to lock down anything valuable and keep it safe and sound and away from competition, we all desire that. And then we all, quite quickly after obtaining said security, immediately take the previously-precious thing we've secured and take it for granted. It's good to have at least a LITTLE insecurity about being left, otherwise you will just be very bored and uninterested, and your brain will focus its attention on securing the next valuable asset or the next achievement or challenge. Everyone does that, it's completely natural brain biology, and it's not avoidable even if you try to resist. It's a waste of energy for your brain to allocate emotions and attention towards anything it has total security and certainty about. There's a balance between the crazy-making high drama of relationship insecurity and the dull deadness of utter security.
"I would absolutely expect my man to leave me if he found someone 20% better who would take him. Or even 10% better. I just think the likelihood of that happening are low enough that I don't spend time stressing about it. Yes, there are people 20% better, but not many that are 20% better AND that would be interested in him. Same goes the other way around."
I sort of agree... but not entirely. I think it depends what you mean by "better". Over time obviously bonds between people strengthen, your history together has value, you come to love traits in the other person that are not objectively "high mate value" etc. And so I wouldn't expect to leave or be left because you met someone slightly higher in objective mate value who was interested in you... but if they met someone who was much better suited to *being their partner* even after taking into account all the shared history etc. then I think it's reasonable to leave... and I wouldn't want to keep someone I loved trapped in a less fulfilling relationship either. Also if you have kids with someone, that alone makes them a better partner for you in a way that's unique to you and not valued by anyone else in the dating market. So for all those reasons I think your point that "it's unlikely anyways" gets more true over time (supposing neither of you change in such a way that you're no longer good partners to one another, which of course also happens frequently, and I think breaking up in those situations is the right thing to do as well). And of course leaving for someone new has transaction costs and uncertainty since you don't know how well the new relationship will work until you leave the old one... all factors that promote stability. The fact that these transaction costs and uncertainty exist are the reason why its uncommon for people in happy relationships to leave their partner for someone else, normally you need to actually be unhappy to think this is worth doing, even if you do meet some people who could've been potentially better partners. (I don't know if you know the Agnes Callard story but she's one of the only people I've heard of who left what she felt was a very happy and functional marriage because she fell for someone else.) All this said, while I think there are many situations in which breaking up is reasonable, some which involve meeting someone who you didn't expect to meet, I certainly wouldn't want to feel that my partner is actively looking for those opportunities.
As for your point about feeling a little insecure in the relationship being healthy - I totally agree, but I phrase it slightly differently as: recognizing that the relationship is not unconditional is healthy. I think believing you're in an unconditional relationship incentivizes bad behavior, laziness etc. and in some sense can actually allow you to treat your partner *more* transactionally, since I think being treated non-transactionally is a condition for most people in their primary partnership (if that makes sense!)
Totally agree with all this. Unwinding a relationship....ESPECIALLY a marriage and REALLY DEFINITELY ESPECIALLY a marriage with children has huge costs. Which is why I think someone would really have to be quite a lot better...probably more than 20% even (though 20% better is actually quite a lot).
And to clarify, I didn't mean "better" on some objective criterion that is the same for everyone, because it most certainly is not. Some things are pretty universal -- i.e. most people prefer someone who enjoys humor to someone who does not, and most people prefer someone better looking than worse, etc. But people have all kinds of quirks that are highly attractive and/or critical to one person that would be considered an active disqualifier for someone else. Religiosity would be a pretty obvious one. But there are lots of things...interests, lifestyles, etc.
Most married couples really end up more alike to each other than they are to 90% or more of other people...there's a lot of matching that goes on. It's why when you see a mis-matched couple, it usually really stands out and people will comment on it, because it's so unusual, they always wonder how on earth did those two end up together??
Fully agree with you that "unconditional love" incentivizes terrible behavior and no one should want it or give it.
20% of what? There is no quantitative, ordinal ranking of “human quality”, so the statement doesn’t make sense.
from above: "I think it depends what you mean by "better". Over time obviously bonds between people strengthen, your history together has value, you come to love traits in the other person that are not objectively "high mate value" etc. And so I wouldn't expect to leave or be left because you met someone slightly higher in objective mate value who was interested in you... but if they met someone who was much better suited to *being their partner* even after taking into account all the shared history etc. then I think it's reasonable to leave"
I agree with problematizing the concept of “better”, but your reply still accepts a concept of “objective mate value” which implies a quantitative ordinal ranking of human quality is possible, even if you don’t think it’s the sole determinant of relationship decisions and you leave room for subjectivity to grow over time. Whereas I would go much further and say the entire concept of “objective mate value” is silly.
I just mean the value set by the market, analogous to how prices are set as a function of demand and supply - this isn’t about deep moral value. But it’s pretty obvious that some people are considered broadly more desirable as romantic partners than other people - that’s what I’m referring to when I say “objective mate value”.
To elaborate a bit, I agree with you that in a relationship you grow to love idiosyncratic qualities in your partner that other people might not notice or care about. And you can draw a contrast between those qualities and other good qualities they possess that are more obvious or broadly appealing. I just think it’s misleading to try and mathematically formalize that distinction with conceptual tools like “market value” imported from economics. Since, as you write, relationships are not transactional, any attempt to gain insight into relationships with conceptual tools designed for transactional commercial exchanges is bound to fail.
The “dating market” is another bad concept. There is no price mechanism, and relationships are not an exchange of one good for another.
20% of whatever mix of values and attributes one of the partners likes. Which will be different for everyone. But I can easily imagine exactly what type of woman my guy would think was significantly better than me. It's not some objective scale, it depends on whatever a person likes. For example I do not enjoy receiving poems (unless they're funny), so a guy who insists upon writing me serious poems is worse than a guy who does not, because then I have to pretend to be interested and amazed by said poems and I don't want to have to pretend that. But plenty of other women would love to receive love poems and think a guy who writes them is better.
Thanks for the reply. I think the unspoken assumption you’re making is that people have an ideal partner in mind and then choose the person they can find who is closest to that ideal. Then, if they find someone else who matches the ideal better, they are tempted to make the switch. I don’t think real relationships work that way though. People don’t have a fixed ideal. Thought and desire are dynamic. When you fall in love with someone, you come to want them, specifically, as a wholistic person rather than an amalgamation of traits. That includes their qualities and characteristics that weren’t part of what you previously thought you wanted but that you now find you just can’t do without.
I somewhat agree with you, but also I think there is a mix of traits people like, and that they DO switch if they find someone with a better mix. Now how willing they are to switch depends on how invested they are in the existing one and how painful or not it is to get out. If you’re just like dating in college or something, easy to jump ship because you perceive a better deal elsewhere. Not so much if you’re married with kids….someone would have to be really much significantly better, on at least one very important trait or a multiple traits. And I actually think 20% is quite a lot, by the way, like that’s a very big jump.
The reason I can’t fully go along with you is that I have just known way too many people — mostly men, though I don’t know why — who have a string of relationships where every woman is almost a clone of the one before. Like to the point where it’s weird and people comment and joke about it. And I don’t just mean a Leo DeCaprio type who keeps trading in for a new 22 year old model, I mean guys who clearly have a specific type because they’ve had 3 long-term girlfriends/wives over a 30 year span, and every one is a very weirdly specific type. So some people very clearly DO have ideals.
If all their partners are pretty similar, it doesn’t sound like these men are “trading up” each time for a new partner who better matches what they want. More likely their relationships just don’t last for whatever reason, and they tend to go for the same sort of person for each new one because that’s what they like and that’s what they’re used to.
> Also if you have kids with someone, that alone makes them a better partner for you in a way that's unique to you and not valued by anyone else in the dating market.
Unless you have a reasonable chance to have more kids with someone else, leaving your former partners and their own future partners, if any, stuck raising _your_ kids.
The premise of this whole conversation is that most people are optimizers; I think, though, that lots of people are satisficers, whose choices are not well modeled by this kind of analysis. Most marriages easily survive the competition of people 20% better who are willing to take up with one or the other spouse, because people are afraid to leave what they know, and they are generally happy with it - even setting aside the moral commitment most people feel to their marriage vows.
What breaks up marriages is not the appearance of a 20% better candidate. Rather, a partner starts an affair (often with someone less attractive to them than their spouse, but more novel), with no intention whatsoever to leave their marriage, gets caught, and the spouse leaves them due to anger and betrayal.
I agree with you actually. And I'm more of a satisficer myself, though I seem to have become more of an optimizer with age...which I don't think is necessarily a good thing and is probably just because I have way more resources now to carry out my optimizing. But you're right, every time in the past that I wanted to cheat or broke up with someone for someone else, it was just for the novelty/excitement factor and not bc the other person was better, and in fact they were usually obviously worse. But that's part of why I'm saying that getting too comfortable/secure is a bad thing, because it makes the desirability of novelty just some some excitement much more alluring.
So I guess I agree that people don't usually cheat/leave for someone better, though I still think it's probably a good thing to assume it could happen, and to maintain at least *a little* fear of wanting that not to happen. Just to keep you from too much complacency and bc it's a bad incentive to have total security and an assumption of unconditional love, as Regan wrote.
Missing in the conversation are children. A major consideration is whether someone I'm partnering with would be someone who I want to mother/father my children. This includes generic, temperamental and cultural components. Simply the desire to want or avoid having children is an important factor.
This is actually healthy as it forces you to take a third person view of a person: how will they father my kids. If you think someone will be a bad father/mother, they're unlikely to be a good long term partner. It forces long term view: if we mismatch on life decisions, we probably shouldn't waste years on something that will implode. It moves things away from superficial looks while retaining some reasonable conditions around health and fertility. If you both want kids and think you're partner would be a good parent, your children provide a decades long joint project.
Happy couples I know with or without kids have long running joint passions. There needs to be some sort of purpose in the relationship. The relationship needs telos. Children are normie telos. The rare couple can perhaps be each others' purpose, but most people will best see their partner as a companion towards that purpose.
If I take 10 random women from some narrow cohort to which I belong (same employer, same college, same subdivision) it is highly likely that I can find one that will feel like a soulmate, "just made for me".
It won't be instant. I'll probably like 4 a little bit, but find one better, and some months in a relationship will mold both of us into soulmate material.
A decently workable marriage will then build upon that. At that point, think that some other woman is 20% better is most likely a delusion caused by some recent trouble in the marriage.
“It doesn’t feel core to most people’s sense of self, and so being “loved” for your beauty doesn’t provide the feeling of deep acceptance and understanding that being loved for (what you see as) your more defining traits does.”
What’s a more defining trait than your appearance?! It’s how everyone in the world recognizes you. It’s your external look you show the world. It’s what changes with time as you age that everyone can immediately identify. It’s what’s literally used in your identification documents.
Furthermore, women being judged on beauty is akin to men being judged and selected for height. Yes the former is more predominant than the latter but the idea is the same and I would’ve thought be relatable to a woman, or at least understandable.
And everything fades, not just physical appearance. Mental capacities (recall, intelligence, reflexes, etc.), physical strength, abilities, and even height. They all fade with time, albeit at a different rate. All this to say, if one of the 2 sexes uses beauty (although it’s technically youth which is a marker for fertility that we’re actually talking about, no?) as a primary trait to filter potential partners with, it isn’t THAT farfetched compared to all other potential traits.
Of course selecting on height is analogous to selecting on beauty, or rather is a special case of selecting on beauty… I thought that was clear given I talked about “shallow traits” and only used beauty as a particular example to respond to the Richard comment. Same would go for wealth as well.
As for people feeling that their appearance is defining of “who they really are” I don’t really know how to respond because that seems so obvious to me. I think very few people feel that how they look is defining of “who they are” in the same way that their personality characteristics or values define them.
Sure, even our personality and intelligence based traits are less stable than we might feel they are in the moment, but that doesn’t imply that they fade in the predicable way beauty does. And the fact that our identity is not clearly stable in this way doesn’t imply that you should be neutral to what your partner primarily values you for (for all the reasons I describe in the piece). And no, I wasn’t using beauty as a short hand for youth… youth is related to beauty of course but I was more imagining a person selecting among people of similar ages on their relative attractiveness. Obviously a woman also wouldn’t want to marry a guy they felt would want to leave them as soon as they aged either though…
Well we should be discussing youth over beauty because beneath the surface it’s youth that men are selecting for, not so much beauty. This for the simple fact that beauty isn’t a marker for fertility like youth is, but I digress.
As far as I can tell from all the above, the thing that makes beauty different from the other traits is that it fades earlier than the others and I can understand women’s apprehension about it. I can make the case that your appearance is as much or more a defining characteristic as personality or values. When someone sees you walking down the street and they recognize Regan, what’s more defining of you than that? They wouldn’t be able to recognize your honesty, intelligence or your accomplishments. But they know it’s you by a glance. How’s that not very defining of you then?!
I think the politically correct answer is that one wants people/partners to value them for the whole package (appearance, strengths both physical and temperamental, intelligence, honesty, kindness, all their values, etc.). But let’s not act like one of these traits (beauty) is so unlike any of the others because it might make some people uncomfortable due to its half-life. As I said men get judged on height (which is an ever narrower subset of beauty as you said, so worse maybe?!) and while some men complain, that’s more because we can do much less to impact height than women can influence beauty. But those men shouldn’t complain either as it’s a marker for something important to women. It is what it is.
> men get judged on heigh
Just height, or more like ability to fight physically? This is natural and I don’t think there’s any way around it. If you don’t like being judged as inferior to another man just because he can mop the floor with you, the response to be expected is “Go tell him to his face”. And the only reason women are not usually judged this way is that men insulate them from it.
Idk do men perceive height as a defining trait they want to be valued and admired for? Of course using youth and beauty as a primary trait to filter for a potential partner is UNDERSTANDABLE to women. It’s just a huge turn off. Even to young and beautiful women. Because it’s shallow af.
I have always wondered why a human athlete who sacrifices everything and focuses their life on winning a gold medal or whatever is held up as a hero to be emulated, but a human who sacrifices everything and focuses her life on her looks is shallow and vain. (The latter is typically, but not exclusively, a "her"....)
I suppose the implied answer is that sport is seen as embodying moral qualities that looking hot does not, but I've seen enough Athletes Behaving Badly to question whether this truly has any basis in fact.
Yeah, I think you have a point … we clearly value super models but we don’t think they’re particularly morally valuable whereas we do sometimes imply that for athletes. I think the assumption is that while being an elite athlete obviously requires luck, good genetics etc that it nevertheless is extremely hard work whereas the hitting peak beauty also requires a lot of luck, but the max amount of work you need to put in is still not that much. And so there’s not much to emulate.
I agree with you about the valuing part though
I think the latter WAS a her, but we’re entering the era of he-men rn.
Zyzz was a bellwether I tell you what.
Came to this post late. Empirical evidence seems to confirm what most people might think of as blindingly obvious - that some men and some women are much luckier (or savvier) in love than others. Of course most people do - in the course of a lifetime – experience some kind of reasonably long-term relationship anyway so one might say it all works out in the end. But some evolutionary psychologists - like Professor David Buss – believe that modernity is possibly creating a runaway form of sexual competition that is actually exacerbating disadvantage to the less-lucky-in-love. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
Thanks for the interesting post. I think there are two aspects that you're not directly considering which are important when choosing a partner:
1) psychological traits. We don't choose partners rationally, objectively assessing their look and character, we choose people whose personalities satisfy some of our deep psychological needs. Often they end up being somewhat similar to one of our parents. This explains why there are many abusive relationships, for example
2) (related to the above) sexual compatibility