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Comment by MrThoughtful | Hacker News Reader

Apart from the "warfare" aspect, it is an interesting question whether the combination of "The man is attractive because of money" and "The woman is attractive because of her looks" can work.

When I look at instances in my social circle, it seems like it doesn't really work. The relationships typically seem to suffer from a lack of mutual interests. The woman's beauty quickly dwindles as time passes. And the woman feels like she is missing out on a "real life" because all she does is be at the side of the man, instead of building her own career. The attraction of the man seems to dwindle quickly too. I know a few such couples, where the man told me that their sex life is dead, even though he wished it were different.

What that tells me is that to work on your attractiveness, working on your career is not the way to go.

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Many people have no interest at all in building a career. (Of the four adults who live in my home, only I want to participate in the economy.) Lots of people, including, I bet, the majority of sober-minded women. Want security and emotional support.

The match-up of pretty female and ambitious and successful male can and has worked through all of history. Yes beauty fades, which is why there better be other layers of connection, but that doesn’t have to be shared interests. I share very little interests in common with my wife of 34 years. We don’t connect in that way. We connect on the level of mutual respect, mutual need, and mutual service.

Our society has become so disconnected from concepts like “respect” and “service.” We are amusing ourselves to death, as the saying goes. But these things work. They are timeless.

My wife hates videogames, retrogaming, electronics and history videos on YouTube.

Yet, we spend 1 hour hanging out in the morning every single day while we drink together the coffee I make in a $25 drip coffee machine.

Secret of a long marriage! 20 years going strong.

Cheers! I learned only during a Covid quarantine that I need to spend a certain period of time in her presence, a few times per day— not even doing or necessarily saying anything— to feel really okay.

In my circle, I've seen it work, not in the same way though. Attractive women often go after the wealthiest men they can get. Likewise the minute a man goes out of a job, the strain in the marriage becomes immediate in a dual income household; less likely in households where the man was the sole breadwinner. The greater the difference in incomes and/or wealth, the more likely the marriage is going to last. And no, these aren't observations from some theocratic shithole in the Middle East or some ultra conservative Asian circles. These are from all the most liberal cities in the world.

And there is data to suggest children of high earners tend to be more attractive, for just this reason.

A woman who is a 9 out of 10, but not inclined or able to make her own high-earning career, can jump to the head of the income line by marrying a wealthy man. No one is surprised by this, but there are certainly some genetic consequences.

Of course, children of high-income families have better access to dental care, pimple medicine, and so forth, in the US.

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