HughRistik comments on Unknown knowns: Why did you choose to be monogamous? - Less Wrong

48 Post author: WrongBot 26 June 2010 02:50AM

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Comment author: HughRistik 28 June 2010 05:22:45AM 5 points [-]

If the theory of hypergamy is correct, and women are indeed more selective on average, the large majority of women are typically going for guys who are at least slightly "out of their league" (which I will operationalize as "higher in rank attractiveness within ones gender).

My hypothesis is that lots of difficulties in dating between men and women stem from the same source: a difference in what each gender is willing to settle for. There may be a tendency of females to only settle for males of higher rank attractiveness, while males are willing to settle for females of "merely" equal rank attractiveness. Males want females at the same level of rank attractiveness, but those females are looking past those males at other males of higher rank attractiveness; meanwhile, males receive interest from women at lower levels of rank attractiveness, who they just aren't that into.This means that both genders experience the same difficulty a lot of the time: what you can get, you don't want, and what you want, you can't get.