Lobster math: Jordan Peterson fans calculate optimal age for men to marry to obtain highest quality females

By David Futrelle

There comes a time in every Jordan Peterson fanboy’s life when he starts to think about settling down with a high quality female for mating purposes.

And so one such fan recently turned to the Jordan Peterson subreddit to ask his fellow lobsters (yes, they call themselves that) to ask for some help with his mating math. At what age, he asked, should a  man who is “progressing up the hierarchy ” allow himself “to be peeled off by a female” seeking marriage?

jtillery32 laid out his dilemma, noting first that

JP has often said women mate across and up [the] competence hierarchy. … Which is patently true. The problem that leaves me (and I’m sure a bunch of other lobsters vying for position) with is wondering when the appropriate time to allow yourself to be peeled off by a female.

Get out your calculators and lobster bibs, people, because things are going to get messy!

Essentially the question is this: if a man is progressing up the hierarchy (status, financial, getting into shape, etc), would it be in his and his future wife’s best interest to wait on settling down until he believed he was at his peak?

Because god forbid you marry some HB 7 you merely love and want to spend the rest of your life with when, if you had waited a few more years, you could have had yourself an 8 or 9 who was more interested in your money than your personality?

A good example of this problem is a 21 year old man who is handsome, articulate, athletic, in college, maybe works as a bartender and probably has pick of the women that attend the school or in some proximity, maybe from ages 18-25 VS the same man, 9 years later who is now in better shape, more handsome, more confident, more wise, financially “minted”, and has a much larger pool to choose from, maybe 21-35 year old women who are of higher quality (that sounds like a cut of beef) by nature of hypergamy.

Sounds a bit like that famous (if recently somewhat tarnished) “marshmallow test” where you offer a kid either one marshmallow right away or two if they’re willing to wait ten minutes. But with hot ladies instead of marshmallows. A whole pool of high quality hot lady marshmallows.

It would seem that if that 21 year old man was to marry someone at that age it would have been a grave mistake as he would have been able to have a higher quality partner had he waited 9 years.

Seriously, why settle for a One Marshmallow Stacey if you could wait a little and snag yourself a Two Marshmallow Stacey?

I would love an actual wise answer here and not some “well when you know she’s the right one when you just know” BS.

Fuck love, we’re all about Marshmallow Stacey Maximization here.

That sounds callous, but the reality is that you really can fall in love with many people and some people do multiple times in their lives, and could probably have successful marriages with more than “the one”.

Obviously this dude who rates women like cuts of beef has a great understanding of what makes for a successful marriage.

When should a man who is trying and succeeding to better himself in every way let himself be peeled off into marriage? And does preemptive peeling lead to resentment?

Dude, I suspect that with you EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING IN THE WORLD LEADS TO RESENTMENT. Waiting. Not waiting. EVERYTHING.

You see this a lot in professional athletes, and people who are aggressively climbing the hierarchy. The superstar dated and married the best girl (smartest, funniest, prettiest) at the high school, but now he’s the quarterback of an nfl team and has his pick of the best girls in the world. It’s a common theme among meteoric rises in men and I haven’t seen a good answer for it. Be loyal to the person who loved you before the status or keep aiming up to someone better?

And plenty of these “superstars” do in fact stay loyal to what you would see as sub-optimal partners. Because, you know, love?

I hate to tell you this, dude, but if this is really the way you think about relationships, you are NOT the great catch you think you are. You’ll make yourself miserable no matter who you marry — if you can find anyone gullible enough to marry you in the first place.

And the chances are good that nine years from now you won’t actually be “in better shape, more handsome, more confident, more wise” with “a much larger pool to choose from,” You will probably be earning more money. But you’ll also be nine years more bitter and resentful, and that’s not an attractive look for any man.

Don’t get married now. But don’t get married nine years from now either — at least not until you clear your head of this utterly toxic way of thinking.

Unfortunately, this being the Jordan Peterson subreddit, none of the commenters offered him the blunt advice he so desperately needs — though a few did warn him that by waiting too long for the “perfect woman” he might end up old and resentful and alone. (Might? Almost certainly will.)

He also got this less-than-optimal advice, from someone calling himself liberal_hr.

I agree that you should wait until your reach your maximum potential peak and then start looking for potential females.

There is just too much of a risk of you falling head over heels for a female and settling for less than you deserve.

Given that he literally deserves no one, I find this a little hard to believe.

And then there was NoelTrotsky, whose advice was somehow even worse:

It would be interesting to apply economic game theory to this problem. I’d bet that a young man’s best move would be to marry an older rich woman while young , take the help up the ladder, have kids, then leave at about 35 and marry young for a second round. Why not increase your odds with several marriages of significant lengths?

So, in other words he should act like a male version of every “Red Pill” dude’s caricature of a calculating, mercenary hypergamous woman who would drop any man she was with if in a second if she had a chance to “branch swing” to a higher-status man?

It’s almost as if the Red Pill notion of female hypergamy is less a reflection of how women actually behave in the real world than a projection of every Red Pill dude’s not-so-secret desire to trade up to a Victoria’s Secret model.

Jordan Peterson really brings out the worst in people, huh?