Mr Good Enough is Still Better

 Due to hypergamy, women always marry up. 

There has been an ongoing sentiment for as long as this author can remember that women who do not marry by XX age (usually 28, 30, 35, etc.) have to "settle" for a man so they can get married. There is so much in that statement alone to unpack, but the focus of this post will be how that statement is completely at odds with the concept of hypergamy. So which is true? 

Hypergamy is true, and women settle when they marry - both statements are 100% accurate and correct. 

The reason they can both be correct? Most women do not have an accurate assessment of their "market value." The "settling" comes when the woman realizes that her market value cannot earn a higher level man. She is not settling on the man - she is settling on her market value! 

There is an article out at Medium that dances all around this fact, but won't say it. A few misquotes from the article and some corrections:

As those women age, their dating pool of eligible bachelors gets smaller and smaller as the high-quality men are coupled with less choosy women.

The women who marry early realize all too well their worth, and find a man suitably better, but not too much better. These successful women either knew their worth, or hoodwinked someone, or got lucky. 

But these women do not lower their standards. Mostly because they are used to calling the shots and might be blissfully unaware that their dating clout is diminishing. The bloom may be coming off the rose, but the rose still doesn’t want to grow with weeds.

These women were weeds all along - which is why no man wanted to put a ring on it. They are just now realizing that their "rose bloom is coming off." Soon, they will realize they are not the rose they pictured themselves to be. Or they will die as a miserable cat-lady. 

[Speaking about "Mr. Right] He is out there. And perhaps he doesn’t have the fancy education. But he also won’t give me anything to write about.

And when you realize that you will not give him anything to "write about," either, you will find him.