This is part of a series. See the index here.
Hypergamy and polygamy are related terms that originally referred to marriage. Hypergamy, as traditionally defined, is marrying up into a higher caste and polygamy is having more than one wife at the same time.
These days even monogamous marriage is on the decline. It is now sometimes useful to refer to hypergamy and polygamy in terms of attraction, selection, and mating (without respect to marriage). Thus, we can discuss the underlying behaviors without the (decaying) marital framework.
In my series on hypergamy, I’ve portrayed all types of serial or plural fornication and extra-marital sexual activity as a kind of polygamy in the same way that others refer to hypergamy in non-marital terms. Modern humans are unofficially practicing polygamy (and divorce) in everything but name.
Now, what happens if you think about hypergamy and polygamy as risk factors? Let’s explore that idea further.
It’s known that circa all mental issues correlate positively, and thus one can speak of a general index or factor of psychopathology (called p).
Fewer people know that the same is approximately true of physical diseases too. They too correlate positively, so one can get a general physical health factor.
And these two factors from the two domains are also a bit correlated. Many people have been talking about the links between mental issues and auto-immune disorders for decades, but is this just part of the general pattern and not special?
Curiously, two papers recently saw the light of day. Nearly identical titles. Only overlap is Samuele Cortese.
It is well-known that mental pathology comes in clusters. People who have one mental illness are much more likely to develop multiple mental illnesses over their lifetime than people who have no mental illness.
Something similar is true of physical pathology. Someone who is susceptible to a particular disease is more likely to be susceptible to a different, unrelated disease than another person who is not susceptible to that first disease.
But these categories are also correlated with each other. Someone with a physical health pathology is more likely to have a mental health pathology (and vice versa). Pathology likes to show up in clusters, whether serially or at the same time.
This would seem to analogize to illicit sexual ‘pathology’: serial monogamy (i.e. fornication and hypergamy) and polygamy (having sexual relationships with multiple partners). We can speak of the factor of psychopathology ‘p’ and the factor of physical pathology ‘d’, so why can’t we speak of a factor of illicit sexuality?
In fact we do. It is called the n-count (or ‘body count’). Unsurprisingly, people with high body counts are more likely to have a mental health diagnosis—a higher ‘p’—and they are more likely to suffer from physical disease—a higher ‘d’—especially with respect to STDs.
Remember this from “Upon Further Examination: Hypergamy?”
Most people are sexually active (and the GSS also shows that most sex occurs within committed relationships, see: How Many Sexual Partners Did Men and Women Have in 2022?). Additionally, a similar percentage of men and women are sexually inactive. This leaves the remaining 20% in a mating pool with one another. An additional percentage (perhaps 6-10% based on the distribution above) may accumulate an additional annual partner through serial monogamy; these are people who have switched from one committed relationship to another within the span of a year. This leaves the remaining 10% of men and women in a mating pool with one another.
These figures are consistent with what STD/STI epidemiologists have called the “promiscuous 10%” (Bellis et al., 2004; Álvarez-Dardet & Ashton, 2004). This is the simple observation that 10% of the population (men and women both) become sexually active younger and have significantly more sexual partners than the bottom 90%.
It is well known that the risk of illicit sexual pathology (including divorce) is significantly higher among those with positive n-counts that include anyone other than their one-and-only spouse. Like mental and physical pathology, sexual pathology comes in clusters: non-random clusters. Hypergamy, fornication, polygamy, and divorce all cluster among those (or their partner) with a high factor of illicit sexuality ‘n’.
To avoid the clustering problem, single men and women who have non-zero factors of illicit sexuality ‘n’ should refrain from entering into marriage and be celibate for life.
Now, as far as psychopathology and physical pathology go, it would be interesting if future research would look at the correlation between those two and a high n-count. Should people with greater susceptibility to mental and/or physical illnesses avoid marriage? Probably!
Back when marriages were arranged, parents would automatically avoid such bad matches. Anyone with a personal (or even family) reputation for sexual promiscuity, bad health, or mental illness would likely not end up being selected for an arranged marriage.
These days it is up to men to ‘arrange’ their own marriages. This, of course, is working out rather poorly. It the absence of formal arranged marriage, single men (and women) are pretty bad at picking their own mates (while remaining virgins before marriage). Humans have evolved to have arranged marriages and its easy to see what happens when that is abandoned.
I wonder if the Manosphere has always just been spinning its wheels trying to solve this problem. I’m not convinced that there is a solution beyond bringing back arranged marriages. This itself is an insurmountable hurdle, but at least it has the benefit of having a proven track record. Little else does.
Even if, for sake of argument, we accept that hypergamy is a real phenomenon, by the time this becomes a problem for men of the ‘sphere, it is far too late to do anything about it. All the effective “interventions” must occur far earlier in the process.
It is some irony, then, that “I kissed dating goodbye” ultimately failed. This was a somewhat successful attempt to solve the problem at an earlier point in the relationship pipeline. Rather than abandoning that, we should have built upon it. After all, if you want to bring back parental arranged marriages, it’s a good starting point to teach young people how to arrange a marriage for themselves. Instead of fixing the simple problems with “purity culture,” it was abandoned entirely.