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PhilGoetz comments on Why Real Men Wear Pink - Less Wrong
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People do let themselves go somewhat after marriage. But they don't fall apart entirely because:
Staying fashionable is fun for some people.
It is important for same-sex status games for women especially.
You have to continue to look nice or your partner might leave you.
Not staying fashionable signals laziness and implies that past efforts to stay fashionable were deceptive mating practices.
Fashion is something used to attract initial attention. I think a lot of people don't care if their mate is fashionable after they're married? (Honestly, most men don't care much if their woman is fashionable, ever; so my perspective is skewed.)
I've had the experience several times that girlfriends pressured me to do things that would make me less attractive. Perhaps this was done unconsciously to reduce my opportunities.
They might still care for signaling reasons: to show off their mate, raising their status in the eyes of both sexes.
I must agree, though I also didn't use fashion to attract initial attention. It seems abhorrent to imagine there are people who would leave someone for looking unfashionable.
Insofar as fashion signals that:
then someone giving up on being fashionable may be an indicator of deeper problems than clothing, e.g., apathy about reduced status or lesser social awareness.
If there are status gains elsewhere (e.g., partner is now in medical residency and wears scrubs when not asleep), I'd suspect unfashionability would not be a dealbreaker.
I wouldn't call relative apathy about status signalling a "deeper problem", on the contrary, I'd call it a virtue. Enough effort is wasted on endless social hierarchy competitions already.
I certainly don't think status indifference is universally problematic, but was trying to point up the difference between "I've figured out that the people in my social circle/the norms I've been using are vapid and petty and I'm ready to move on with my life" and "I'm no longer inclined or able to participate in activities I find meaningful."
The discussion, as I read it, had been about using fashion to attract partners and then giving up on being fashionable. In this case, I posited someone who started dressing fashionably specifically in order to attract partners and quits dressing fashionably when they've done so. Maybe they've had a revelation of the "my norms are vapid" sort, or maybe they've just accomplished their goals.
But thomblake had an implied question about whether anyone would actually leave a partner because the partner looked unfashionable. One possible cause could be that what made them initially attractive were other character traits/personality features that also led them to dress fashionably, in which case the partner might be have good cause for concern (the "no longer able to do activities" situation). P(!traits | !fashion) > P(traits | !fashion). So the other status gains I referred to would increase the estimate of P(traits | !fashion).
One wouldn't leave a partner for no reason other than unfashionability unless one places such a high value on fashion that no other status gains could make up for its lack. But a partner who suddenly quits caring how they look might send up some red flags. (Absent discussions of updating norms, of course.)
It depends: I wouldn't call not strongly caring about status as a terminal value a problem, but irrationally underestimating how important status is as an instrumental value for other goals is a problem (the stereotypical failure mode of nerds, and IME that stereotype does have a grain of truth).