7 ms·

Males generally dont marry up? Couple things come to mind. Throughout my time, I've seen that women have their fair share of not wanting to marry down either.

Males generally dont marry up? Couple things come to mind. Throughout my time, I've seen that women have their fair share of not wanting to marry down either. You want to say generalizations generalizations. Sure, but I think the age old stereotypes do have a hint of truth to them and the Bloomberg page here also states, "High-earning women (doctors, lawyers) tend to pair up with their economic equals, while middle- and lower-tier women often marry up." You say problem in quotation marks and I don't know why that is? If people are not finding their partners, that's a huge problem. Here's the anecdotal: My sister and her friends are all pretty educated women. Unfortunately, their standards have really gone up since receiving said education. I'm not saying this to bash, it's simply my observation. These days, they're all still single and reaching/past 30 and no man can scratch their itch. The whole thing is problematic.

copperx 11y ago
> My sister and her friends are all pretty educated women. What do you mean by this exactly? PhDs? MDs? > These days, they're all still single and reaching/past 30 and no man can scratch their itch. Could you give examples of the occupations of the rejected suitors?
- auntyJemima 11y ago
  Yes, they include PhDs, DDS, Architecture, Mech Engineering. Their rejected list is guys that don't have much all the way to degrees in mining engineering. Software engineering tends to be what they "settle" for or are ok with. One, because software engineers make decent enough money and if they discounted them, they'd be throwing away a huge and competent group of men.
  - aussieindian 11y ago
    I suspect unfortunately many Software guys act thirsty when young and get confident around women only into their 30's. Just as their stock raises,they settle for late 20's & 30's women who has had her fun and now wants to play mommy ( not wifey) Such a travesty that many a men are blind to the redpill truths https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedRedPill https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedRedPill
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  I can't speak for him but I'm a bit over 40 and single again, and looking. What I'm seeing in the DC metro area is a ton of single women in my age range who are single and never married, and all of a sudden now they want to get married and have kids. (Some of them want kids, some don't.) So not "pushing 30", but "pushing 40". Other data I've seen shows that there's a big surplus of single women in both the NYC and DC metro areas. OTOH, in Seattle and the Bay Area, there's a big surplus of single men. (There's a smaller surplus in Portland.) My problem is that I don't live quite in the DC area, I'm about an hour away from downtown DC. And what I'm finding is that the desirable single women all live right in downtown DC, and do not want to date a man who lives an hour away. Now, if there were a healthy market of compatible men, this attitude would be quite understandable. But we're talking about a bunch of women who are bitching that they can't find any decent men to date, but then I come along and I'm told, "you look great, but you're too far away!! Sorry, but give me a ring when you move closer." So IMO, these women are extremely picky and unrealistic. If I find someone I really like and might want to marry, I would move to be closer to her, just like married couples routinely move long-distance because one of them got a new job. I've even stated this up-front, as I do not plan to stay in my current location long-term (I'm a software engineer like probably half the audience here, our jobs don't last that long and we move around a lot). So as far as I can tell, many of these women have done this to themselves by being way too picky and having overly high expectations. They think they're going to find a guy who looks like George Clooney or whatever, has a $250j/year career, and lives across the street from them.
  - sotojuan 11y ago
    Might be related to how inflated the praise for higher degrees is. I mean, I know a JD or medical degree is no small feat, but it doesn't mean you're suddenly only good enough for the best of the best or are in some privileged genius tier (that goes for men and women).
    - charlesdm 11y ago
      Sadly, there are plenty of people in the world who are great at memorising but are actually horrible at applying their knowledge. While such degrees can be impressive achievements, it says very little about a person. I've met brilliant high school graduates and plain stupid people with phds. A lot of it depends on the person.
- koder2016 11y ago
  The sad bit is that guys are more interested in their youth (or lack of thereof at 30) and looks rather than education... Hence CEOs marrying young secretaries. Cruel joke.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/06/has-being-single-in-america-changed/for-the-college-educated-there-is-a-man-deficit-in-the-us http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/06/has-being-si...
erroneousfunk 11y ago
Well, anecdotal evidence to match your anecdotal evidence: I'm a female with a master's in software engineering and am marrying a guy with one semester of music school who's been a social worker for 10 years, in the spring. But less anecdotally: for the first time in history, the percent of couples in which the woman has obtained a higher level of education than the man is higher than the other way around: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/12/record-share-of-wives-are-more-educated-than-their-husbands/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/12/record-share... Keep in mind that this is ALL couples, whether they were married last month, or 50 years ago, so the trend can be expected to lag behind current graduation trends. So both men and women seem to be figuring it out, your sister aside.
- 2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
  "Does marrying someone with less education mean “marrying down” economically? Not necessarily. When we look at the newlywed women who married someone with less education, we find that a majority of these women actually “married up.” In 2012, only 39% of newlywed women who married a spouse with less education out-earned their husband, and a majority of them (58%) made less than their husband."
  - ssalazar 11y ago
    Not really that surprising. Irrespective of gender, a terminal degree rarely leads to increase job earnings except for MD, JD, MBA, and similar.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
      Right, my interpretation of other comments about education, was that women were marrying down based on education level. But economically this isn't true. They still marry up. I'd be surprised if degree level was a major factor by itself. E.g. If the woman has a masters but the man has only a bachelors, she would discount the man as a potential mate. He may still be socioeconomically on par or better.
balls187 11y ago
> Males generally dont marry up? My wife has a PhD, and is a Senior Data Scientist (why not Chief, who knows), and belongs to a noble Swedish/Finnish family. I am P.O.C. trash, from a (mostly) poor town in S Tacoma, WA. I hit the jackpot. > Unfortunately, their standards have really gone up since receiving said education. I'm not saying this to bash, it's simply my observation. I suspect that part of it has to do with the circles you hang out in. If you are a non-professional man, you are less likely to interact with professional women. If you do, you will have more chance to pair-wise bond. Anecdotally, a guy I train Krav Maga with, works at the maintenance crew at a local hotel. His wife has a degree in Aerospace Engineering. They met at a gym.
- aussieindian 11y ago
  Looks like you have some alpha traits and don't act as a doormat. So not surprised you hit the "jackpot". Any guy who maintains frame and dominance can do the same. women go for men who can either provide for them or can act as the captain. Have a look at the [1]redpillwoman sub for examples of the latter & anywhere else for the former. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/RedPillWomen https://www.reddit.com/r/RedPillWomen
- adenadel 11y ago
  Parkland?
  - balls187 11y ago
    Yes. Though I often times claim Spanaway, since I attended Spanaway Elem, Spanaway Jr High, and Spanaway Lake Highschools.
    - adenadel 11y ago
      I'm pretty fond of Parkland and Spanaway. I went to PLU.
      - balls187 11y ago
Shivetya 11y ago
perhaps one reason people don't marry up or down often is that they do not tend to frequently interact. In a professional environment how often do you meet up with people not as the same or nearly the same level as you? Do many workers fraternize with their bosses when many are just more likely to complain upper management doesn't understand? I would put most marry up/down on those who have frequent non professional outside activities. Whether its religious, a particular hobby, or simply a circle of friends whose careers all diverged.
MicroBerto 11y ago
Of course you'll find some males that "marry up", but the data proves what many of us have known forever - as a man, you should strive to be elite in something, preferably something useful and sexually attractive. Otherwise you're just another brick in the wall. Where this is all going to blow up in society is the fact that women are now better-educated, and will soon make more money than their male counterparts, who are slowly getting more discriminated against (see Yahoo lawsuit) and less engaged in the proverbial rat race. A case in point is looking at highly successful black females. They have a rough time in the dating scene, and this is extremely well-documented. Over the course of the next generation, I see this spreading to other females as well. What effectively is going to happen is that you'll see more men dropping out of the marriage pool, the pareto principle in dating will become stronger than ever, and reliance upon the nanny state to help single mothers raise their children will likely go up too. Hate it all you want, but these are three extremely well-established trends and I don't see them getting any better. Tinder is the canary in the coalmine. This is where we're heading. A country needs strong, highly-engaged men who act as leaders. America is losing that more each and every day, and it saddens me.
- auntyJemima 11y ago
  I agree a lot with you. Time will tell and we can just hope to carve out the best for ourselves in this big cold world.
- tomp 11y ago
  > as a man, you should strive to be elite in something, preferably something useful and sexually attractive. Otherwise you're just another brick in the wall. The way you phrase this, the more probable cause would be that women don't want to marry down, hence men are motivated to be better (and they know that by being "just another brick in the wall" won't get them the partner they want"). This agrees with my observations of the world. Men don't care about accomplishments, they (we) just want a woman that is beautiful; whereas women care much more about a man's social status (warning: this is a very broad generalisation and of course doesn't hold for everybody).
- colmvp 11y ago
  Regarding your point about black women: At least in North America, Black females, like Asian men, have a harder time in the dating scene partially due to their gender/ethnicity combination. Both sets endure media representation and stereotypes that play against their sexual desirability. I'm sure people here will profess that they are immune to any images cultivated by the media and I'm not going to discount their experience. However, I think it's naive to believe that images we consume on a daily basis, such as the gender/ethnicity makeup of desirable lead characters or negative representations in the news don't unconsciously affect us. Anecdotally, I have met more black men who said they would never date a black women and Asian women who said they'd never date Asian men compared to white people who say they'd never date a white person. Online dating stats from eHarmony, okCupid, and coffeemeetsbagel reinforce that observation. On top of that, people generally have a statistical preference for those within their own race. And if black men have a higher tendency to be imprisoned than other men, that puts black women at an additional disadvantage to finding a partner. I guess my overall point is issues black women face are very different and unique to what Hispanic/White/Asian women face.
thaumasiotes 11y ago
> Males generally dont marry up? > I've seen that women have their fair share of not wanting to marry down either "Males generally don't marry up" and "Females generally don't marry down" are exactly the same claim.
- tomp 11y ago
  Not really, if you read between the lines and realize that they are not just claiming fact, but also cause ("men don't want to marry up" vs "women don't want to marry down").
  - DominikR 11y ago
    And which one is the cause here? I don't see why anyone wouldn't WANT to marry up. I'm pretty sure that there are much fewer women in the high status category than men, so these men make the only rational decision (if they don't want to stay alone) - they marry down.
DominikR 11y ago
> My sister and her friends are all pretty educated women. Unfortunately, their standards have really gone up since receiving said education. Once you reach a certain level in earnings you will have a very hard time finding someone that earns approximately the same amount. I'm sure that this is currently even harder for men. In this situation you really only have the choice to either marry down or never have a family of your own and stay alone for the rest of your life. The thing is, you don't really "marry down". Usually people in the US/EU don't have to fear that they will have to face starvation or anything like that if they marry the wrong women/man so what is marrying down even about? If one partner already has a lot of resources, why would he/she then require the other partner to be his/her equal in this regard? When you remove economic resources from the equation you'll find that there are many perfectly fine potential partners out there with all the attributes that one could hope for.
efaref 11y ago
> Males generally dont marry up? It's the politically correct way of saying women don't marry down. Cf. the works of the great poet of our times, K. West.
- LordKano 11y ago
  Men, generally, can't marry up because women, generally, won't marry down.
whitegrape 11y ago
If you're a man trying to marry up, you're facing extra challenges if the woman values her family's opinions at all. Not too long ago in pretty much all the civilized world the Father controlled who his daughters wed, you had to impress him even more so than the woman.

copperx 11y ago

> My sister and her friends are all pretty educated women. What do you mean by this exactly? PhDs? MDs? > These days, they're all still single and reaching/past 30 and no man can scratch their itch. Could you give examples of the occupations of the rejected suitors?

auntyJemima 11y ago
Yes, they include PhDs, DDS, Architecture, Mech Engineering. Their rejected list is guys that don't have much all the way to degrees in mining engineering. Software engineering tends to be what they "settle" for or are ok with. One, because software engineers make decent enough money and if they discounted them, they'd be throwing away a huge and competent group of men.
- aussieindian 11y ago
  I suspect unfortunately many Software guys act thirsty when young and get confident around women only into their 30's. Just as their stock raises,they settle for late 20's & 30's women who has had her fun and now wants to play mommy ( not wifey) Such a travesty that many a men are blind to the redpill truths https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedRedPill https://www.reddit.com/r/marriedRedPill
Grishnakh 11y ago
I can't speak for him but I'm a bit over 40 and single again, and looking. What I'm seeing in the DC metro area is a ton of single women in my age range who are single and never married, and all of a sudden now they want to get married and have kids. (Some of them want kids, some don't.) So not "pushing 30", but "pushing 40". Other data I've seen shows that there's a big surplus of single women in both the NYC and DC metro areas. OTOH, in Seattle and the Bay Area, there's a big surplus of single men. (There's a smaller surplus in Portland.) My problem is that I don't live quite in the DC area, I'm about an hour away from downtown DC. And what I'm finding is that the desirable single women all live right in downtown DC, and do not want to date a man who lives an hour away. Now, if there were a healthy market of compatible men, this attitude would be quite understandable. But we're talking about a bunch of women who are bitching that they can't find any decent men to date, but then I come along and I'm told, "you look great, but you're too far away!! Sorry, but give me a ring when you move closer." So IMO, these women are extremely picky and unrealistic. If I find someone I really like and might want to marry, I would move to be closer to her, just like married couples routinely move long-distance because one of them got a new job. I've even stated this up-front, as I do not plan to stay in my current location long-term (I'm a software engineer like probably half the audience here, our jobs don't last that long and we move around a lot). So as far as I can tell, many of these women have done this to themselves by being way too picky and having overly high expectations. They think they're going to find a guy who looks like George Clooney or whatever, has a $250j/year career, and lives across the street from them.
- sotojuan 11y ago
  Might be related to how inflated the praise for higher degrees is. I mean, I know a JD or medical degree is no small feat, but it doesn't mean you're suddenly only good enough for the best of the best or are in some privileged genius tier (that goes for men and women).
  - charlesdm 11y ago
    Sadly, there are plenty of people in the world who are great at memorising but are actually horrible at applying their knowledge. While such degrees can be impressive achievements, it says very little about a person. I've met brilliant high school graduates and plain stupid people with phds. A lot of it depends on the person.
koder2016 11y ago
The sad bit is that guys are more interested in their youth (or lack of thereof at 30) and looks rather than education... Hence CEOs marrying young secretaries. Cruel joke.

toomuchtodo 11y ago

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/06/has-being-single-in-america-changed/for-the-college-educated-there-is-a-man-deficit-in-the-us http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/06/has-being-si...

erroneousfunk 11y ago

Well, anecdotal evidence to match your anecdotal evidence: I'm a female with a master's in software engineering and am marrying a guy with one semester of music school who's been a social worker for 10 years, in the spring. But less anecdotally: for the first time in history, the percent of couples in which the woman has obtained a higher level of education than the man is higher than the other way around: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/12/record-share-of-wives-are-more-educated-than-their-husbands/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/12/record-share... Keep in mind that this is ALL couples, whether they were married last month, or 50 years ago, so the trend can be expected to lag behind current graduation trends. So both men and women seem to be figuring it out, your sister aside.

2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
"Does marrying someone with less education mean “marrying down” economically? Not necessarily. When we look at the newlywed women who married someone with less education, we find that a majority of these women actually “married up.” In 2012, only 39% of newlywed women who married a spouse with less education out-earned their husband, and a majority of them (58%) made less than their husband."
- ssalazar 11y ago
  Not really that surprising. Irrespective of gender, a terminal degree rarely leads to increase job earnings except for MD, JD, MBA, and similar.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
    Right, my interpretation of other comments about education, was that women were marrying down based on education level. But economically this isn't true. They still marry up. I'd be surprised if degree level was a major factor by itself. E.g. If the woman has a masters but the man has only a bachelors, she would discount the man as a potential mate. He may still be socioeconomically on par or better.

balls187 11y ago

> Males generally dont marry up? My wife has a PhD, and is a Senior Data Scientist (why not Chief, who knows), and belongs to a noble Swedish/Finnish family. I am P.O.C. trash, from a (mostly) poor town in S Tacoma, WA. I hit the jackpot. > Unfortunately, their standards have really gone up since receiving said education. I'm not saying this to bash, it's simply my observation. I suspect that part of it has to do with the circles you hang out in. If you are a non-professional man, you are less likely to interact with professional women. If you do, you will have more chance to pair-wise bond. Anecdotally, a guy I train Krav Maga with, works at the maintenance crew at a local hotel. His wife has a degree in Aerospace Engineering. They met at a gym.

aussieindian 11y ago
Looks like you have some alpha traits and don't act as a doormat. So not surprised you hit the "jackpot". Any guy who maintains frame and dominance can do the same. women go for men who can either provide for them or can act as the captain. Have a look at the [1]redpillwoman sub for examples of the latter & anywhere else for the former. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/RedPillWomen https://www.reddit.com/r/RedPillWomen
adenadel 11y ago
Parkland?
- balls187 11y ago
  Yes. Though I often times claim Spanaway, since I attended Spanaway Elem, Spanaway Jr High, and Spanaway Lake Highschools.
  - adenadel 11y ago
    I'm pretty fond of Parkland and Spanaway. I went to PLU.
    - balls187 11y ago

Shivetya 11y ago

perhaps one reason people don't marry up or down often is that they do not tend to frequently interact. In a professional environment how often do you meet up with people not as the same or nearly the same level as you? Do many workers fraternize with their bosses when many are just more likely to complain upper management doesn't understand? I would put most marry up/down on those who have frequent non professional outside activities. Whether its religious, a particular hobby, or simply a circle of friends whose careers all diverged.

MicroBerto 11y ago

Of course you'll find some males that "marry up", but the data proves what many of us have known forever - as a man, you should strive to be elite in something, preferably something useful and sexually attractive. Otherwise you're just another brick in the wall. Where this is all going to blow up in society is the fact that women are now better-educated, and will soon make more money than their male counterparts, who are slowly getting more discriminated against (see Yahoo lawsuit) and less engaged in the proverbial rat race. A case in point is looking at highly successful black females. They have a rough time in the dating scene, and this is extremely well-documented. Over the course of the next generation, I see this spreading to other females as well. What effectively is going to happen is that you'll see more men dropping out of the marriage pool, the pareto principle in dating will become stronger than ever, and reliance upon the nanny state to help single mothers raise their children will likely go up too. Hate it all you want, but these are three extremely well-established trends and I don't see them getting any better. Tinder is the canary in the coalmine. This is where we're heading. A country needs strong, highly-engaged men who act as leaders. America is losing that more each and every day, and it saddens me.

auntyJemima 11y ago
I agree a lot with you. Time will tell and we can just hope to carve out the best for ourselves in this big cold world.
tomp 11y ago
> as a man, you should strive to be elite in something, preferably something useful and sexually attractive. Otherwise you're just another brick in the wall. The way you phrase this, the more probable cause would be that women don't want to marry down, hence men are motivated to be better (and they know that by being "just another brick in the wall" won't get them the partner they want"). This agrees with my observations of the world. Men don't care about accomplishments, they (we) just want a woman that is beautiful; whereas women care much more about a man's social status (warning: this is a very broad generalisation and of course doesn't hold for everybody).
colmvp 11y ago
Regarding your point about black women: At least in North America, Black females, like Asian men, have a harder time in the dating scene partially due to their gender/ethnicity combination. Both sets endure media representation and stereotypes that play against their sexual desirability. I'm sure people here will profess that they are immune to any images cultivated by the media and I'm not going to discount their experience. However, I think it's naive to believe that images we consume on a daily basis, such as the gender/ethnicity makeup of desirable lead characters or negative representations in the news don't unconsciously affect us. Anecdotally, I have met more black men who said they would never date a black women and Asian women who said they'd never date Asian men compared to white people who say they'd never date a white person. Online dating stats from eHarmony, okCupid, and coffeemeetsbagel reinforce that observation. On top of that, people generally have a statistical preference for those within their own race. And if black men have a higher tendency to be imprisoned than other men, that puts black women at an additional disadvantage to finding a partner. I guess my overall point is issues black women face are very different and unique to what Hispanic/White/Asian women face.

thaumasiotes 11y ago

> Males generally dont marry up? > I've seen that women have their fair share of not wanting to marry down either "Males generally don't marry up" and "Females generally don't marry down" are exactly the same claim.

tomp 11y ago
Not really, if you read between the lines and realize that they are not just claiming fact, but also cause ("men don't want to marry up" vs "women don't want to marry down").
- DominikR 11y ago
  And which one is the cause here? I don't see why anyone wouldn't WANT to marry up. I'm pretty sure that there are much fewer women in the high status category than men, so these men make the only rational decision (if they don't want to stay alone) - they marry down.

DominikR 11y ago

> My sister and her friends are all pretty educated women. Unfortunately, their standards have really gone up since receiving said education. Once you reach a certain level in earnings you will have a very hard time finding someone that earns approximately the same amount. I'm sure that this is currently even harder for men. In this situation you really only have the choice to either marry down or never have a family of your own and stay alone for the rest of your life. The thing is, you don't really "marry down". Usually people in the US/EU don't have to fear that they will have to face starvation or anything like that if they marry the wrong women/man so what is marrying down even about? If one partner already has a lot of resources, why would he/she then require the other partner to be his/her equal in this regard? When you remove economic resources from the equation you'll find that there are many perfectly fine potential partners out there with all the attributes that one could hope for.

efaref 11y ago

> Males generally dont marry up? It's the politically correct way of saying women don't marry down. Cf. the works of the great poet of our times, K. West.

LordKano 11y ago
Men, generally, can't marry up because women, generally, won't marry down.

whitegrape 11y ago

If you're a man trying to marry up, you're facing extra challenges if the woman values her family's opinions at all. Not too long ago in pretty much all the civilized world the Father controlled who his daughters wed, you had to impress him even more so than the woman.