Friday, January 8, 2010

Why Monogamy Rocks!

Most women have an emotional commitment to being monogamous (if only in marriage), and are offended that their husbands struggle with feeling good about the idea of it. The husband may not cheat, but they don’t feel good about monogamy. I’ve got the answer for you… the truth is that most men do much better in a monogamous culture, than a polygamous one.

Most men have a desire to have sex with more than one woman… ok… ideally lots of women. Ok… ALL of them if possible! After all, a man can easily have sex with hundreds of women in a single year and impregnate them all if he was lucky, and then take a nap as the women raised the kids by themselves. There is a natural resistance to the idea in the minds of men that they should limit themselves to just a single woman. Men are wired to be fairly promiscuous by nature.

Women on the other hand, have a huge investment in bearing and raising children. She gets only a few good shots at getting this done, so she is wired to be far more choosey about partners. A common misconception is that women are wired to be “good girls” and interested in only monogamy. However what they are actually most interested in, is hypergamy, or as better known, “marrying up”. Women want the best partners they can have.

In a purely monogamous society, as I said earlier equal sex rank couples form. 10s with 10s, 9s with 9s. It looks like this…


However in a polygamous society, there are no rules that limit a high Sex Rank male gaining access to more than one female, and females are not limited to the highest Sex Ranked unmarried male available. So in a polygamous society, the marriages may look something like this;


As you can see, the top dog male does really well with lots of women, and second place does pretty well, but with two less sexy women than he would have had otherwise. Every other male does significantly worse than they would in a monogamous society. The bottom men get no hope for sex at all!

Also what tends to happen in polygamous societies, is that without the rules of one man, one woman, competition between men becomes increasingly fierce, and often will easily turn from the common showing off and jostling for position in a monogamous society, to deadly violence or harsh social control. Male Sex Rank is more heavily weighted towards Alpha traits in a polygamous society than Beta traits. Personally my stronger suit is the Beta traits, so in an aggressive polygamous culture (like a High School LOL) I would have a lower Sex Rank, than in a monogamous culture where defending myself from thugs is a lesser concern.

Apart from periodically having your current husband killed from random violence, and having other men move in aggressively on you, most women do better in polygamous societies than they would in monogamous ones. Sometimes it’s better to be the third wife of a super rich guy, than the only wife of a poor man. You'll probably get less sex, but the guys will be hotter. Which probably appeals to some women. However your sons will probably die before you see grandkids from them, and you'll probably be raped a lot. So it's really only "better" on a mathematical level. (Your mileage may vary!)

Bringing it home to me on a personal level, is that I’m probably overall about an 8 in Sex Rank. If we lived in a polygamous society, I’d probably be a 5 or a 6, and my sweet Jennifer wouldn’t be married to me. She’s probably be the third wife of some guy with ass loads of money. And if she did decide to marry me for love… I’d probably just get stabbed by an angry 2 with nothing to lose and I’d die watching her be raped. More likely Jennifer just wouldn’t have even given me the time of day, and I’d be excited to be married to a lunch lady twelve years older than me who lost her first husband by being stabbed by an angry 2.

As I'm quite fond of Jennifer, and detest being stabbed...I’m leaning towards monogamy as a good thing.
Posted by at 9:13 PM
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15 comments:

  1. So my wife is hypergamous. Well, that explains about 1/2 of it, she definitely did "marry up" biologically. I'm an 8 or 9 and she's about a 5 or 6. We married very young. Her family had money, I was as poor as a church mouse.

    However, now that all 6 of her progeny are safely secure, looks and intelligence aren't nearly as important to her as the size of a wallet...what gives? Was I just breeding stock?
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  2. There's an element of breeding stock in the matrix of Sex Rank to be sure. I'd think that once the breeding bit is over, the wealth bit to raise the kids becomes more heavily weighted though.
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  3. Apparently "cash is still king" Atholk. However, I am still an 8 or 9, and frankly she has not aged nearly as gracefully. She is now a flat 5 on a good day.

    I make decent money, but nothing spectacular. I'll never be able to afford that house in Santa Barabara she's always wanted on my salary alone, and there's the rub.

    However,playing devils advocate there is no way she is going to "hook up" with a another decent looking professional guy pulling in 160-175k/year as a 40 y/o divorcee with 6 kids; so what gives?

    I flat out know, I could become "hypergamous" at this point in my life, and "trade up" to a newer better looking model. I am not prepared however to hurt my kids just so I can "get a good piece of trim"; so I patiently endure.

    For a longtime having a wife who was less attractive actually payed handsome dividends for me as she was very very attentive.

    I know it sounds shallow and selfish, but she supported me very well, and we both prospered because of it. Unfortunately, I just haven't prospered to the 300k+ level yet, but WTF when she met me I was an E-3 making 13k/year. That's a little upside.

    LIL
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  4. I think this perhaps best matches up against the thought that once Sex Rank really starts to diverge, it creates a destablizing influence on the relationship. It isn't always the hottie of the couple making a dramatic move to upset the applecart.
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  5. Hey I just found your blog I think your spot on when it comes to relations! You seem to deliver your point with just the right amount of humor. Keep up the good work and thank you for your insight, and the time it takes to maintain a blog. OK I have to get back to reading maybe I can move up a point in rank!
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  6. I live in the San Francisco bay area. This is almost a polyandrous society, or at least it would seem that at least 50% of the people I know socially describe themselves as "poly"

    The interesting thing I notice is that the men with multiple women are very rarely above average in terms of physical attractiveness. Now, part of this is that I'm a nerd, my girl is a nerd, and nearly all my friends are nerds. On average, nerds are less attractive than, say, sales people, simply because being attractive doesn't help you be a better nerd, and nerds are more likely to tolerate people who are not physically attractive in social situations. (we have standards, sure, but few of those have to do with how you look.) So the people I hang out with are probably, on average, less attractive than other professionals.


    But even within this community of nerds, the men I know who are successfully polyandrous, who have sexual relationships with multiple women at once, are not more attractive than the average man in my social group. they /are/ more socially optimized, of course, maintaining one relationship at a time is hard enough for most of us, but like I said, they are not any taller, richer, or more physically fit than the average man in my peer group.

    The other thing I observe is that most of these men in "poly" relationships have a single "primary" - a woman with whom they have a long term relationship. Some of these last for quite some time. these 'primary' relationships tend to get more investment and last longer than the 'secondary' relationships. So, you still seem to see a one to one pairing of males and females, but people still have sex outside of that relationship with 'secondary' partners. So the 'secondary' partners are still available to be another's primary, so if there was an equal number of men and women in my peer group (we're nerds, so there isn't.) you might not see a large group of single men left out in the cold. (now, the frequency of sex in 'primary' and 'secondary' relationships, I wouldn't know. I don't seem to be capable of dealing with a 'poly' relationship myself. It's possible that a woman in a 'primary' relationship with a less desirable male would use him for emotional support and save the sex for her more desirable secondary partner? I wouldn't know.)
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  7. As soon as the rubber hits the road and people start having kids the poly stuff seems to become a lot harder to make work.

    >> It's possible that a woman in a 'primary' relationship with a less desirable male would use him for emotional support and save the sex for her more desirable secondary partner? I wouldn't know.

    That's basically called Cuckolding and while it's not common, it's hardly rare either.
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  8. >> As soon as the rubber hits the road and people start having kids the poly stuff seems to become a lot harder to make work.

    Yes, this in fact happened with my parents, and that's a big part of why I'm leery about poly relationships in spite of my hippy upbringing. (I'm the same anon you are responding too.)

    Some point out that this also has a lot to do with cultural acceptance. I know a few poly families here with kids, where there is a support network that accepts that sort of thing. My parents didn't split until they moved to a place without a poly-accepting social scene.
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  9. Generally it seems poly in our culture equals greater likeihood of the primary relationship break down.

    Poly is just exhausting to manage from what I can see.
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  10. "detest being stabbed" LoL... me too
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  11. Why is polygamy the only other option? What about polyamory?

    There are other societies on this planet that are not monogamous and they don't end up with rape or man killing man. They end up with everyone having sex with each other - happily.
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  12. Polyamory usually just falls apart as soon as attempts to have children enter the picture. It's one thing to know your love interest is having sex with someone else, but when they are doing it to get pregnant and you are fertile the jealousy is extreme.

    The de facto polyamory of blended families are clearly more effort to maintain than intact vanilla nuclear family groups.
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  13. >>> It's possible that a woman in a 'primary'
    >>> relationship with a less desirable male
    >>>would use him for emotional support and save
    >>>the sex for her more desirable secondary
    >>>partner? I wouldn't know.

    That's what happened in a situation I was involved with. I unintentionally busted up a primary relationship of over 10 years.

    In regards to the main point of this article, in a so-called monogamous culture, the 9's and 10's still operated as if they are in a polygamous culture. Most women who are with 7's and lower will have flings with 8's, 9's, and 10's. (see The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley).

    This works out fairly well, except when the higher ranking male falls in love with one of the women. Then he isn't happy with the woman still living with her lower ranking husband. That makes a mess for everyone.
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  14. That summation is hilarious. one of the main reasons I've read all your blog & book is your wit.

    Also, excellent use of math to explain the benefits of monogamy. The long term, societal benefits outweigh the short term getting your rocks off.
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  15. As a married woman and a polyamorist with who knows MANY poly people across the US, a poly relationship can work well and does not break down with children at all. Everything that you talk about this blog can apply whether you are monogamous or poly. I madly love my husband, but I also have strong feelings for my boyfriend. My boyfriend and husband are great friends. It is more effort to maintain; however, it is worth every minute of it.
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