Chapter 1 | Hypergamy

Definition

Hypergamy, derived from the Greek words hyper (above) and gamos (marriage/pairing).

Hypergamy is the act or social practice of a person dating or marrying a spouse of higher social status or sexual value than themselves.

Hypergamy is a major mating component of female sexual strategy and a topic pillar of Red Pill praxeology.

Why women are hypergamous

ALL of women’s sexual behaviors are driven by biology geared towards getting the best possible man she can acquire: a man who is both maximally physically and socioeconomically successful to satisfy her sexual and resource needs (dual-mating strategy).

Ideally, her best available option would both provide excellent genetics for her future children and also be highly resourceful to ensure their children’s survival (and comfort) as well as her own. In a perfect world for her, she would be able to find both of these characteristics in the same man, rather than one or the other. She would rather a man ‘have it all’ rather than needing to outsource or forego the rest of her needs and preferences with others outside of her best available man.

It is worth noting that there is a major distinction between getting a man and keeping a man. A woman could briefly hook up with her best available option without him ever sticking around. For all intents and purposes, the best available man a woman can keep is her best hypergamous option, rather than the highest quality man she can have sex with.

That doesn't mean women don't want to get the most hypergamous sexual option they can sleep with when they can; it just means there are more considerations that go into their long-term goals. Women also don't necessarily like the pump and dump of a high-value lay; it often damages them mentally and emotionally, and it's one reason they get guarded about high-value casual lays if they already know it's going to be short term. Women often can and do have a night of fun with a sexually hypergamous guy when that's what they're looking for, and they do often cheat or outsource their sexually hypergamous drives to more sexually desirable men than their current mate. Women do have mixed needs or wants at different times; this is just to say that hypergamy applies to more than just sexual fitness.

Women also have much higher reproductive costs than men. They can only have children as long as they have available eggs, whereas men can have children well into their later years. Women also get pregnant and can only have one child at a time; men do not have this restriction and can have as many children with as many women as are available for him to reproduce with. Pregnancy in and of itself has steep reproductive costs with increased illness, reduced mobility, and windows of vulnerability.

Women have a strong incentive to select a man who both provides her children with healthy genetics as well as sticks around during pregnancy and is capable of providing for her and their children during their dependent years. While men also have an incentive to pair bond with a woman who is rearing their children and ensure their children’s survival, it isn’t a strict requirement. Sexually successful men have lower reproductive costs, which allows them more freedom to have a pluralistic sexual strategy (multiple women), whereas women benefit most from a hypergamous sexual strategy (best possible mate above herself).

Why men are not considered to be hypergamous

As stated before, women have high reproductive costs through pregnancy and limited fertile years; men do not have this same issue. It also isn’t that men would not get a hypergamously satisfying woman if they could; it is that they often can’t. A man who is average looking at best and works a median-income job is not going to successfully pull a model with a million-dollar contract and an elevated lifestyle. Such a woman has access to men who have a lot more to offer.

In general, and without the assistance of diversity initiatives, men on average are stronger and larger than women and generally make more on average than women, making the average man generally a default hypergamous option for the average woman in the natural order. However, the top performers and highest value people in the world are consistently men, so the best possible women naturally can date upwards and the hierarchy below that generally follows the same pairing trend.

In the modern zeitgeist, women can also find better hypergamous options outside of their local area due to advances in online options and travel for finding men, which disrupts an otherwise theoretical 1:1 pairing of men and women until women feel the pressure to settle as their biological clocks tick down to zero.

While men would pick the best possible woman that they can, most cannot and instead settle on the first woman who shows them substantial attention even when genuine desire is one-sided or low. Most men in human history did not get to reproduce or pass on future generations. Mitochondrial DNA studies routinely show that there is more diverse maternal DNA present in populations and less paternal DNA (meaning fewer men conceived with more women). As many as 4 to 17 women to every one man went on to leave a surviving lineage of children to future generations.

For the aforementioned reasons, there is little practical value in discussing male hypergamous preferences because men generally cannot act on them. So, for all intents and purposes, hypergamy is considered to be a female-driven phenomenon because they are the only sex that can consistently act on such opportunities and all hypergamous dynamics flow in one direction for the most part (obviously very wealthy men land models when they themselves are not very attractive, etc.).

That isn’t to say there aren’t male attempts at hypergamy: just look at the average simp, white knight, and orbiter to see male hypergamy in action. It’s just to say it doesn’t really succeed when men try it. Hypergamy, in so far as what actually moves the sexual marketplace, stems from the hypergamous behaviors of women more so than men.

Dual-Mating Strategy

(Alpha Fucks/Beta Bucks | AF/BB )

Because of modern influences on hypergamy, women often struggle to find both physical and socioeconomic hypergamy in the same man. What this results in is that women’s needs often get split into different types of men. On the one hand you have the physically and behaviorally ‘alpha-type man’ (alpha fucks) and the resourceful provider type of man who offers a lot of rapport and stability (beta bucks), the latter of which women do not have much genuine desire for.

Essentially this results in a dual-mating strategy: get genes and sex from alpha fucks (Chad) and get resources and provisions from beta bucks (Billy beta). This isn’t to say men are all one or the other; after all, men fall on a continuum of traits and aren’t even necessarily the same man from day-to-day or even month-to-month, but these archetypes serve as a useful short-hand for conceptualizing types of men in a woman’s mating strategy when a woman cannot definitively find both traits in satisfactory amounts in the same man.

Women, especially younger women in their prime with years left on their biological clock (i.e. The Wall), will pursue attractive and sexually capable men for as long as they can. After all, these men also still have time to establish their careers and become provider options as well. These men already demonstrate that they are excellent sexual options that satisfy those hypergamous needs. An alpha-type can always attain status and money later. An undesirable man cannot always become sexually appealing (or at least not willing to improve SMV).

As women start to run out of time on their biological clocks to have children and find a life-long mate, they tend to settle and will opt for the beta bucks provisioning path over being alone into spinsterhood. Many of these women who settle do end up cheating or outsourcing their needs for sexual satisfaction.

Branch Swinging

Branch swinging is the act of a woman leaving one man for another man, usually a man of greater hypergamous value than her current man. Metaphorically akin to monkeys traversing the jungle, women will often grip onto the next branch before leaving the branch they are already hanging onto.

For evolutionary and practical reasons, women prefer to branch swing rather than be alone and without the benefits of men, whether those benefits are sexual, financial, or both. By the time a woman decides to leave her current man she has almost assuredly already evaluated and planned out her options weeks before leaving her current man.

The vast majority of branch swings are women leaving men for either higher sexual SMV or men with higher socioeconomic status. This isn’t to say women won’t branch swing from alpha fucks types to providers. They will when there is no chance of long-term commitment and their mate-pairing anxiety or competition with other women is too high with non-committal alpha types.

Women branch swing to their perceived better option, even if that man is not objectively a better hypergamous choice; hypergamy is often a subjective gamble for women. The only relevant factor in a branch swing is that SHE perceived it to be her best course of action, rather than that it actually was the better hypergamous choice.

"She’s not yours, it’s just your turn"

Branch-swinging is the origin of where the phrase “she’s not yours, it’s just your turn” came from. When a woman does not feel as though you are her best hypergamous option, regardless of whether you are her alpha fucks, beta bucks, or some combination of the two, she will often leave for a man who they perceive does meet her hypergamous criteria.

Additionally, these choices don’t have to be rational either; a lot of women will leave a pay pig, a boyfriend, or even Chad for other opportunities. She might juggle a provider while having casual sex. Her specific trajectory or mating and dating choices don’t have to make sense; women will often relegate men to “just your turn” for a variety of impulsive reasons and poor decisions. What is important to know and remember is just why that phrase exists.

A lot of men black pill over this phrase, but not all turns end. The point of the phrase isn't to tell men that their turn will end, but rather to be there as a reminder of hypergamy or change in goals if it happens to them.

Hypergamy by age

These are rough approximations of hypergamous behavior across a woman’s age range, as featured in Rollo Tomassi’s second book, The Rational Male: Preventive Medicine. (Phrasing and commentary here is largely mine; conceptual basis is Rollo’s).

Party years (18-22) Many of these women are still funded by their parents. They are not particularly focused on economic provisioning at this time in their life, and many are in college and have their first legal access to clubs, apps, and their own transportation, where sexual access and freedom are more accessible than ever before in their lives. These are typically considered to be a woman's party years and where she is most responsive to male sexual potential, excitement, and unrestrained genuine desire.

Transition years (23-27) Age range where women are in their prime and settling their career path and solidifying their financial independence. At this age, women are taking into account the kind of man who both meets their sexual and potential or desired economic needs to achieve maximal stability and desire. They’ve had enough ‘fun’ to learn from their experiences with bad boys, yet still young enough that they’ve still ‘got it.’

Epiphany phase Age 27 is around the age most still-single women begin to have their epiphany phase in which they realize the clock is ticking and that they need to lock Mr. Right sooner rather than later and that exciting fuckbois won’t do it even if they still dabble in occasional casual sex.

Security years (28-32) The age range when women are realizing they REALLY don't have unlimited time. Many have been "burned" or "hurt" by conventionally attractive men who they couldn't lock down, and the unfortunate reality that they need to compromise on their hypergamous needs (settle) becomes a harsh reality. Their age-matched male peers are now established and going for women in their 20s, which is a rug-pull realization for many of these women who now realize they should have landed an attractive and established man sooner instead of endlessly hedging their bets.

Reconstruction years (33-38) Early to mid-30's is commonly considered to be post wall for women (depending on how well they maintained their health and appearance) and among the ages where women have a rapid decline in fertility and looks. From here on out is a race against the clock if they want children, marriage, or a family at all and with a guy they can even stomach lying in bed and getting undressed next to.

Reinvention years (39+) This is basically the shit out of luck years where women must accept their lot in life or truly settle with the remarkably limited options they have, if at all. These are spinster years, the age range where women are usually relegated to a sea of divorced and irreversibly hardened men as options. Single and divorced women in this age range will ‘reinvent’ their identity; an identity largely centered around how they somehow stayed single this late in life and detached from any personal responsibility of how their choices contributed to this lot in life.

The topic of hypergamy understandably gets a lot of ire and frustration from men, especially newly unplugged men who suddenly realize they have a lot of work to do to raise their hypergamous standing among women compared to their current status.

Hypergamy isn't something to be angry or disappointed at. It can be frustrating and nearly black-pilling at times. Ultimately, hypergamy is just part of the game, rather than as an unfair game rule to obsess over or resent.

Posted this on r/TheRedPill but forgot to post the announcement here as well. The first chapter is being posted today

Announcement:

The sidebar is being written to be an information guide that details the main TRP concepts in an easy to read and easy to understand format.

Mostly for the benefit of new to TRP or guys who mislearned TRP the first time around.

It is a collaborative work among myself and other Endorsed Contributors and Senior ECs with proofreading and agreement on content standards and accuracy of concept explanations.

The current sidebar is a quasi-structured curated collection of posts that seemed good at illustrating TRP concepts and by no means was ever meant to be an instructional pamphlet and is in many ways too big and disjointed.

In the coming months new sidebar chapters (about 10) will be added as they are finished and will be made into a PDF that will be a lot less pages than the current sidebar (the current one sits around 400). Probably 50 or so in the new one and a lot easier to grasp.

The old sidebar will be still be here as a PDF (it currently has a lot of old or broken links as individual posts).