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?
Ë„ Ë„ Ë„
This.
It sounds like the name of a manga. Words thrown together that ALMOST make sense but not quite. I think this one is about a girl who makes sculptures out of marshmallows trying to break the world record for largest marshmallow sculpture. And somehow it involves fighting. And someone screaming, “I WILL GET STRONGER SO I CAN PROTECT YOU!” These things are required in all manga. Or maybe just the ones I read or something.
Speaking of couples with a strong, loving relationship, People magazine — that notoriously left-wing, feminist weekly — has this story about the Trumps’ trip to Brussels:
No-Swat Zone: President Trump Holds Melania’s Hand in the Tightest Grip Yet as They Depart for Europe
https://people.com/politics/president-trump-holds-melania-hand-europe/
Click through to see the charming photos.
No, no, no. You say the word “loyal” as though it were a good thing. It is not.
A man betters himself by dating and — if the woman is super lucky — marrying up. And once he marries, he doesn’t stand still; he continues to better himself.
This is the way of the wise, not to mention handsome, man.
“So I can drain your energy for the Negaverse!”
…sorry, first thought.
I could save these bozos all their dorky calculations and just tell them the exact age at which they all should marry:
NEVER.
Because no woman wants a lobster-fetishizing jackass with a raging case of sexist hypergamy. Much less as a potential father to her potential children.
There, fellas, I saved you a lot of brain strain. You’re welcome!
“Fall…in love? With a woman? What does that even mean to these guys?”
I would assume it means to them what it means to most people, actually. Terrible people can fall in love, in the sense of having all the neurochemical flurries of oxytocin and dopamine and intense preoccupation/fascination with someone.
Of course, that phenomenon is biologically short-lived. Needless to say, they can’t much *love* in the “verb” sense, the caretaking and emotional labor and self-crit sense. No wonder intimate relationships are so disposable to them, they have no sense of what it means to have successfully nurtured one over many years!
I have encountered this type of behavior before. The idea that I can’t do the thing now, because what if I need to do it later, or what if I get more rewards later and I would have wasted my opportunity to Do The Thing back in the past instead of waiting a few more hours worth of gameplay to do it when it was more beneficial?
It’s called Too Good to Use Syndrome or the trope Too Awesome to Use, and it’s mostly applied to digital objects in video games like high-tier restoration items or special one-use items that can do awesome things. It can get to the point where you’re at the final boss fight and you’re still holding on to those Elixirs and Mega Potions because you just don’t know if this is the boss’ final form or not, and if you use it now and he’s got another form, then you’d have wasted it, and I know I’m on 30% HP and I have no MP, but WHAT IF???? I mean, Mega Potions and Elixirs don’t grow on trees, damnit.
However, I’ve never seen anyone with the absolute fucking ego to have it about themselves before.
I really love how these Peterson cultists were all cheering for “enforced monogamy” to solve the problem of angry entitled dudes deciding to kill people, and now talk about how they should definitely ditch their current partner the second a hotter one becomes available. Super logically consistent there, dudes. Truly you have a staggering intellect.
@Paradoxical Intention – Resident Cheeseburger Slut
Jordan Peterson fans consider themselves a one use thing that’s too good for you and me.
That’s simultaneously pompous, self derisive and pathetic all at the same time.
Tell them that and these guys’ll just hold out for Aleph-zero Marshmallow Alice. Who, mind you, doesn’t hold a candle to Small Veblen Ordinal Vanessa … ok, they’re still screwed 🙂
Skipped the MRA synopsis, went straight to googling the blurb for that book. Where do you even find these?
Wait. All those maths still miss the main variable : the size of the dick. Because of course. (sarcasm, if not clear)
Mammotheers, how would you describe the Venn diagram of Jordan Peterson fans and Elon Musk fans? The latter has been in the news over the past few days because of the Thai cave rescue, and the outrage with which the Musk cultists react to any criticism of their hero seems rather lobster-like.
Whilst I hate to support peterson fans in any way at all, I feel I can safely say that they should absolutely be looking for partners who love them for their money, because who the hell is going to love them for their personality?
@Moggie
Musk has lots more fans, because he is someone that people have heard of. His fans like him because of the stuff he does, which is to a certain extent “hero engineer saves the world and gets hella rich” which is obviously something that techbros like and imagine themselves to be. Peterson seems more about telling mediocre guys that they’re right and that women are shit. Apart from the overarching theme of “asshole white guys massively assured of their guru’s infallibility” I suspect that there isn’t too much overlap.
Could easily be wrong though.
I think a lot of Elon Musk fans thinks he’s cool because he’s like a real-life Tony Stark (or name your other billionaire tech based superhero). That’s childish, but you can have this idea without hating women.
Do these guys want gold digging wives? I thought that was one of their major complaints. I guess that wouldn’t matter as much if you see your love life as game theory, women as status symbols to show to other men and you also regard feelings/human interaction to be unimportant variables. As long as the woman is hot and you have the power and thus the upper hand in the “relationship”, it wouldn’t matter whether she loves you or your money.
Also, I must agree with Buttercup: the pursuit of perfection is very likely to lead to bitterness. No matter which woman you settle down with, a better one might come along. Even if you never meet a better woman than your current one, you will still sit and think about all the women you could have had.
Dear Mr. Lobster,
I find your logic compelling. So compelling that I think your conclusions don’t go far enough. A man in his 30s is nowhere near his peak yet. Consider the example of the perfect male role model, Donald Trump. He must have thought himself a pretty successful man in his 60s. He was a wealthy real estate developer and the star of his own television show. He was always hanging around models and pageant stars. But then he became President in his 70s. In retrospect, settling down with Melania (a 9.5 at best) was a grave mistake. As President he would have had his pick of all the women in the world if he weren’t saddled with a wife already. Don’t make the same mistake! You should wait at least till your 70s before considering any woman. Maybe 80s just in case.
My vote for the optimal age for Jordan Peterson fans to get married is 167.
No, no. They of course want to be handed perfect HB10 virgins who are 100% devoted to them and satisfying their every whim, who will never age or have any needs of her own, and who does all this with absolutely no effort on the part of the dude. And any woman who fails to live up to this standard is worthy of hatred and derision.
Since there are no actual “good” or fully “human” (i.e. meets all the above criteria) women, the next best option is to treat them all like subhumans and exploit the system to get the closest facsimile(s) to their desired woman as possible.
Depends what you mean by ‘better’ surely? You want someone ‘better’ looking but she has married you for your money? Not really a great trade off unless you LIKE moaning about golddiggers, which of course men like this do.
Woman must be perfect 10 but not vain AT ALL, be extremely well groomed but not spend lots of time preening, very well dressed but not have a better paid job to pay for expensive clothes etc etc.
Create an impossible ideal and you can keep on moaning about all women as none of us will ever fit the bill.
We’re on to you mate!
@Cohen the Librarian
I know! I’m surprised that we haven’t seen JP fans here yet, talking about context and how important it is to consume his work in its entirety.
Apropos of this, something I saw on Twitter yesterday, from a JP fan:
9000 hours of his videos.
9000 hours.
It’s over 9000!!!
I read a book called Modern Love (Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg) in which the authors partly blamed online dating for the rise of the “afraid to settle” attitude – it’s more common now because of all the seeming options.
I’d say the part about “settling down” later is more tied to boring-er socioeconomic issues: going to school longer, looking for jobs (if you want kids, raising them costs money), just doing other things…
If anything, I learned that a lot of people in the last ten or so years are meeting each other online (in this case, there’s more evidence) and that Ansari can never decide where to have lunch.
…Some context to him: a few months ago, a young woman accused him of sexual misconduct after a date, trying to push her into things when she didn’t want to do them, and a lot of people were saying things like, “You wanted to have sex anyway! Why a problem?” This was so frustrating!!! Like, don’t you understand consent? You wouldn’t do that with other things… “Oh, don’t get upset if you’re in your work clothes and someone pushes you into a pool! You wanted to go swimming in an hour anyway, right?”
People were talking about this before here. But it’s very frustrating!
Now, I don’t know if Ansari’s past behaviour coloured my reading – at least he apologized and wasn’t as obtuse as his defenders – but I thought the book had some privilege blindness. For instance, the lunch thing. He wrote as if going to expensive restaurants every day was normal.
…To tie this back to the lobster dudes (attention problem? me? psssh!) perhaps being rich won’t make you such a good catch (heh). You’ll still be resentful about not finding a “high quality partner” AND you’ll be undecided about where to eat all the time.