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Science | Relationships
Debunking the Myth of Hypergamy
“Dating up” is a male fantasy, not a real-world reality
What does it mean to love someone? What does it mean to desire them?
In today’s low-key dystopian world of hyper-consumerism — where individuals and identities are curated, packaged, and sold across digital storefronts and algorithmic platforms — few questions are more pressing than those concerning how we bond. Yet, contemporary discourse on sex, desire, relationships, and love have followed along the arch of corporate consumerism, becoming enmeshed with the lexicon of marketplace transactionalism, reducing the complexities of human intimacy to exchange-based metaphors. Dating apps exhibiting potential matches like a catalog of commodities certainly haven’t helped.
The commodification of connection has spawned a sprawling cottage industry of self-help relationship gurus peddling formulaic solutions, who pretend to have unlocked the secret to success with women. In what can only be dubbed “instructional performance art” (and that’s putting it nicely) — equal parts pseudoscience and machismo theater — men dig out charts, graphs, labyrinthine diagrams, and fill entire blackboards with lists and notes, trying to solve women like a math puzzle. At the core of it all lies a singular, rigid, belief: hypergamy.
Hypergamy is the idea that relationships operate on a sort of transactional logic, where men trade resources — wealth, power, social status — for women’s youth, beauty, and fertility. Men and women are believed to be biologically “hardwired” for distinct mating strategies¹, trading men’s money for women’s looks. Popularized by 1980s and 1990s evolutionary psychology, and amplified by uncritical media outlets, it says that women are biologically predisposed to “marry up,” picking older, wealthier partners to obtain material security, while men pursue attractiveness as a sign of reproductive fitness.
The idea is replete throughout the Manosphere. It’s echoed everywhere men congregate and discuss relationships online. Yet, for all of its ubiquity, hypergamy is a myth, one born more out of consumer culture and media than real-life relationships. In fact, I believe, the myth of hypergamy is the root cause of all of our…
