HIGH-VALUE ISN’T ALWAYS ABOUT LOOKS OR MONEY
or Deciphering Why Some Surprising Men Succeed with Women
[photo taken by Lisa Ann Hudson]
The purpose of this essay is to assert that the concepts of High-Value Men and High-Value Women have been too narrowly defined, as well as to put some more meat on the bones of the popular understanding that being “high-value” is determined by only a handful of metrics. What follows will in no way negate the popular qualifications but articulate other ways that exceptional individuals are regularly assessed by the opposite sex as worthy of being sought out for marriage.
I’ll also conclude with additional thoughts on (a) voluntary unnecessary restrictions on mate choices, and (b) how “High-Value” and “Sexual Marketplace Value” must be analyzed differentially if one intends to branch into plural families.
[credit: adobe.com]
[TLDR:CAMERA warning: the following post is loaded up with verbal castor oil.]
[RAZOR warning: Read At Zher Own Risk.]
[Also: this Substack article is definitively not a seduction technique; know that I know that no woman who reads the following will ever want to marry me. I write for others’ gain.]
“He who loves admonition loves knowledge, yet he who hates reproof is irrational.” [Proverbs 12:1, Concordant Version of the Old Testament]
Unbeknownst to most of them, this essay was commissioned by a wide range of men and women asking that I address in writing two things: (1) successful personality types the pick-up artists and other red-pill guys entirely ignore; and (2) why certain generally-considered-alphas tend to remain mate-less. With apologies to the late Kevin Samuel and Rollo “There-I’ve-Said-Your-Fake-Name” Tomassi, I’ve been continuing some lay tinkering I’ve been doing since the 1970s with both Sexual Marketplace Value (SMV) and the concepts of top-tier individuals: both what are known as High-Value Men (HVM) and High-Value Women (HVW), each of which incorporates SMV but isn’t solely dependent on it – applied to the general population but with an also-requested bias towards usefulness for men and women considering engaging in scripturally-legitimate plural marriage (‘polygyny:’ one man, multiple wives). I don’t claim empirical precision, but this is the general set of assumptions I’ve developed over 6 decades and use when coaching and discussing relationship issues.
· Fair or unfair, determining SMV is far less complicated for women than for men. Due to generalized female hypergamy and the current topsy-turvy nature of our gynocentric culture, women have been enjoying latitude to indulge in a wider range of expectations for men than men have for women. This will change.
· In a parallel sense, determining what makes a woman high-value is also somewhat easier. This will not change.
· Both Samuels and Tomassi recognize that, in the recent past, 80% of the women have been chasing 20% of the men, as well as that this is rapidly trending toward 90% of the women chasing only 10% of the men. This could irreparably destroy whatever no-fault-divorce, hormonal birth control, feminism and the Malthusian Cloward-and-Piven Alinskyites haven’t already purposefully decimated of our culture. That top 10% of men would predominantly lose any incentive to marry due to the unending stream of women behaving like groupies, while the remaining bottom 90% males will increasingly recognize that marriage for them is not only likely an economic disaster but a torture-chamber no-fun-house populated by women who consider their male spouses unworthy.
· I’ve written elsewhere about the need for men to individually and collectively stand tall by reasserting their God-created role as much-needed leaders of women. Men will have to both:
o Uncompromisingly demand respect; and
o Stop rescuing disrespectful women.
· When contemplating men retaking the mantle of respect, I assume two things rarely discussed by either Kevin (whom I continue to revere, may he rest in peace) or Rollo (whom I respect for having collated a great deal of previously-available information into a handful of books but whose demand for worship I reject):
o the trend toward 90% of women offering themselves up for sex and relationships to only 10% of men will continue but will also likely hit a wall sometime before it reaches that point and then head in the other/correct direction, but for now it’s foolish to ignore this dynamic; and
o determining the top 20% of men to label as high-value is nowhere near as simple as the formulas the typical red-pill or pick-up-artist content-creators would have us believe (heavily reliant on emphasizing physical attraction for women; and on money, muscles and game for men); instead their formulas tend to only account for the 50% of HVMs who meet their limited characteristics (which ipso facto means their advice is impractical – actually, nearly useless – for the less-flashy common man). Therefore, the only reliable qualifications they cite to identify a man as being in the top 20% are income and its related metrics.
[credit: adobe.com]
So here’s my way-more-complicated but additionally-nuanced, thorough and (I believe) accurate set of qualifications for SMV, HVM and HVW:
SEXUAL MARKETPLACE VALUE
§ SMV applies predominantly to sexual attraction and by itself is only a predictor for ability to attract short-term sexual partners.
o SMV for men ages 21-50 is determined (a) predominantly by physicality [is he hot?] combined with (b) a smattering of the following:
§ the impression that he has enough money or assets to pay for associated dates;
§ boredom-prevention characteristics to make the free meals and entertainment more fun:
· charisma;
· sense of humor; and
· intelligence; and
§ whether other women want to have sex with him (the high female need for social approval almost eliminates sexual desire that can’t be validated by fellow females).
o SMV for men ages 15-20 and 51-99 is generally below average except when men over 50 restrict themselves to women no more than 5 years their junior, in which case SMV rises with age (because, e.g., at 70, single women outnumber single men 15-to-1).
o SMV for women ages 15-30 is determined predominantly by looks; i.e., naked appearance right out of the shower before make-up; non-obese proportional weight and height – combined, even when engaging in casual sex, with some desire on the part of men to avoid women with children or those with high body counts. To get just sex, men will tend to put up with a great deal of disrespect, masculine frame, and general feminist attitude, but that tolerance is in the process of rapidly disappearing when it comes to relationships.
o Given all the younger women also making themselves available, SMV for women ages 31-60 generally precludes any possibility of sincerely being considered 8s, 9s or 10s, so start off by subtracting 2 on the 0-10 scale after making an initial SMV assessment: a woman who would have been a 7 when 22 will be considered average at best at 33, even without weight gain. Men who say otherwise are generally untrustworthy, because their active choices tell the real tale.
o SMV for single women over 60: divide 22-year-old SMV by 2, then subtract 1 more for overweight, 2 for obese and 3 for morbidly obese. Virtually no men want to have sex with the average obese senior female.
HIGH-VALUE
§ High-Value Women [HVW]: females whom men consider to be in the top 20% for potential long-term relationships (marriage and near-equivalents) are made up of all of the following:
o All women between the ages of 15-30 in the top 10% on the SMV scale (true 9s and 10s) who have low body counts (defined as lower than their age minus 15) and who are childless. Sorry, the stereotypes are real:
§ Women mistakenly think they can camouflage high body count, but men generally have good radar re: body count, and men do not believe high-body-count women have the ability to sustain relationships.
§ Men generally do not want to subject themselves to the thankless and dangerous task of being a stepfather for some other man’s children – and typically can’t trust single mothers.
§ On the other hand, yes, men will marry the most difficult women imaginable if they’re super hot, have a low body count and are childless but want to have children.
o Plus, all childless low-body-count women ages 15-60 with at least 6 SMV who qualify with at least one of the following:
§ Top 10% femininity.
§ Top 10% physically fit.
§ Top 10% who demonstrate respectful cooperation (aka submission/obedience), acknowledgement of women’s dependence on men and appreciation towards men re: that dependence.
o Plus, all women ages 15-60 with at least 7 SMV and either (a) children or (b) body count higher than her age minus 15, exhibiting at least one of the following:
§ Top 5% femininity.
§ Top 5% physically fit.
§ Top 5% submission and appreciation towards men re: being dependent on them.
o Plus, all high-body count women ages 15-60 with at least 8 SMV but with children, exhibiting all three of the following:
§ Top 5% femininity.
§ Top 5% physically fit for age.
§ Top 5% submission and appreciation towards men re: being dependent on them.
o [Note 1: it may look like these percentages could add up to more than 20%, but they won’t because many HVWs will qualify in more than one regard.]
o [Note 2: men are very flexible and have far less investment in marrying HVWs than women have in marrying HVMs; men will also happily marry non-HV women with significantly lower pure SMV if they are feminine, fit and appreciatively submissive.]
o [Note 3: fair or unfair, only husbands consider their wives to be high-value when they’re over 60.]
[Kevin Samuels lets a woman demonstrate the irrationality of a woman thinking men should value morbidly-obese women who are more masculine than feminine.]
§ High Value Men [HVM]: males who qualify as being in the top 20% for marriage and other equivalent long-term relationships.
o All men between the ages of 21-50 who are top-10% annual income earners (currently approximately $170K and above). Sorry, the stereotypes are real.
o Plus, among all non-obese men at least 5’10” tall between the ages of 15-80, at least two of the following:
§ Top 5% of income earners ($220K+).
§ Top 5% of net worth ($1M+).
§ Top 10% of observable social status.
§ Top 10% of respect among other men in general, not just among small peer group.
§ Top 5% of measurable recognized accomplishments, including education.
§ Top 5% of physically fit for age.
§ Top 3% sense of humor.
§ Top 2% IQ.
§ Top 10% in charisma.
o Plus, among all non-overweight men under 6’0”, ages 15-80 (again, sorry, but while women focus first on money and status, they almost never see overweight men under 6’ in height to be high-value), at least three of the following:
§ Top 3% of income earners ($400K+).
§ Top 2% of net worth ($2.7M+).
§ Top 5% of observable social status.
§ Top 5% of respect among other men in general, not just among small peer group.
§ Top 2% of measurable recognized accomplishments, including education.
§ Top 3% of physically fit for age.
§ Top 2% sense of humor.
§ Top 1% IQ.
§ Top 5% in charisma.
§ [Note 4: we all know famous men who meet the standards in this last group – we know who they are, and we generally know who their paramours are and were.]
o [Note 5: again, the above percentages will not exceed 20%, because most HVMs will qualify in multiple regards – in fact, almost no one will be top 10% charisma without qualifying in at least 4 other characteristics.]
o [Note 6: recognize the distinction regarding looks between being marriage material for men versus for women; men are more insistent on attractiveness for marriage partners, whereas women are more insistent on attractiveness for casual sex partners.]
[Kevin Samuels details the importance of recognizing whether marrying is or isn’t worth it.]
Keep in mind that I assume the following as ideal marital age differences on wedding day:
· Women 18-25: men 5-15 years older
· Women 26-35: men 10-20 years older
· Women 36-45: men 15-25 years older
· Women 46-65: men 20-30 years older
· Women over 65: men 25-35 years older
Once again, women, life just isn’t fair. Because women generally want older husbands and men generally want younger wives, as a woman ages her pool of potential partners diminishes, while as a man ages his pool of potential partners expands. Senior citizen women have almost no chance of finding committed mates these days, because they outnumber single men more than 10 to 1 — and they’re also competing against all single women ages 40-60.
Men can wait to get married and have a family, but women are biologically boxed into the necessity to get on the stick about becoming a wife at a very young age — especially if they want to have children.
All the evidence one needs that women are delusional these days can be gathered by reading Baby-Boomer single-women dating-site profiles: less than .1% of those women will ever find mates. Occasional casual sex, yes; husbands or even boyfriends, no – no more than one in a thousand. This may change in the future after younger women begin wising up, but the Baby Boomer and Gen X women were the most thoroughly programmed by feminist equalism, which has led to them being considered insufferable by men – even without their demands for being treated to lives of luxury and international travel.
[credit: https://www.aarp.org/home-family/friends-family/info-2023/may-december-romance.html]
But, some of the same warnings apply to men as they age.
So, men, privately take stock of whether you really qualify as a High-Value (top 20%) Man.
If you are an HVM, and you’re unmarried, you will have no problem setting even very high standards for what you expect in a female mate. If you’re on a dating site or working with a matchmaker, limit how you market yourself to mentioning the categories that qualify you as being at or near being an HVM. Forget the rest; women looking for specific characteristics you don’t exhibit will either overlook you or ask and then reject you, but you’re blessed either way by their rejection.
If you’re an HVM but are already married and want to expand your family with one or more additional wives – especially given the ubiquity of hardheadedness currently exhibited by women of marrying age in our culture – it’s (a) almost entirely unrealistic to expect to snag an HVW for plural marriage; and (b) while polygyny is perfectly supported by the Word of God, Scripture gives no indication that one should be focusing on the High-Value Women who will have no problem finding monogamates if they’re so inclined. Instead, think:
widows;
widows and orphans;
women unrighteously-divorced by their ex-husbands;
women who righteously divorced ex-husbands;
even repentant single mothers who are ready to embrace patriarchy and demonstrate appreciative submission.
[Credit: Dreamstime]
But pay close attention here: the category that most of us are in isn’t High-Value Men – our typical delusion is incorrectly assuming that most polygyny wannabe males are alphas, when actually we are less likely to be alphas than the general male population – so what are we to do in that case?
a. Be brutally honest with oneself about one’s true place on the SMV scale as well as on the relative-value-among-men continuum. It’s no sin to be average or even below average (after all, half of all men are below average and yet are still made in God’s Image). If you already have a working marriage, you’ve got that on your résumé as a recognizable strength. But if you’re also older than 50 and/or not really physically fit and/or neither high income nor possessed of an above-average amount of assets and/or of average IQ and/or lacking any significant charisma or sense of humor, spend some time alone in front of a mirror and get realistic about where you fit in within the pecking order. Too often within Biblical Polygamy circles, we men are prone to being overly buoyed by having discovered The Big Secret of Polygyny, assuming that knowing The Truth will lead to Doubling Our Pleasure (or, worse yet, making up for whatever has been lacking in our already-existing marriages), foolishly failing to recognize that, even if we’re successful, the more likely outcome is Doubling or Tripling our Challenges.
b. Recognize that if you haven’t already established patriarchy in your marriage and family, any additional marriage you initiate is bound for misery, most especially because your 1st wife will be able to sabotage the 2nd marriage due to your failure to recognize that she remains the actual leader of your family.
c. Review Rollo Tomassi’s chart that shows how female and male personal-value-trend bell curves interact with each other:
[https://i0.wp.com/therationalmale.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/smv_curve1.jpg?ssl=1]
Take stock of yourself using the above metrics, then check out your age on the chart and multiply your SMV assessment by a fraction according to your age (e.g., if you’re around peak age 38, multiply by 1.0, but if you’re 23 or 50, multiply by .5). Better yet: pay close attention to what age a woman would be when she’s at the same point in her value bell-curve journey – and recognize that you’ll have to be higher.
d. Start doing the same thing as you evaluate potential wives. If you’re just an average 45-year-old, you couldn’t realistically expect to attract even an average 23-year-old woman, much less do so if she’s a virgin – or has to share you with another woman.
[credit: freepik]
I very adamantly do not agree with those who assert that polygynous men must be remarkably better men than monogamous men – women sharing a husband have no right to expect that they all deserve HVMs, especially given that many of them would have had no prayer of finding any husband without polygyny, but both common sense and the widows-and-orphans exhortations in Scripture argue for recognizing that a man’s expectations can’t be quite as high as they were when he was much younger seeking a 1st wife – that’s as delusional as having faith in a fantasy that one can acquire a 2nd wife superior to one’s 1st.
. . . and the Worst News Saved for the Last Elephant in the Room . . .
This is one of the most-frequently-missed-but-unmistakably-relevant reasons why single men and, even more so, married men seeking additional wives have trouble finding mates: Self-Inflicted Diminishment of the Dating Pool.
Generally, young men are more realistic about this than older men. Their opinions about matters related to politics, social issues and even religion haven’t yet become set in concrete, so they don’t vet potential wives anywhere near as much along those lines as they do based on whether young women are hot, willing and winsome. Men who are older and, in particular, more inclined toward patriarchy tend to at least start off expecting to marry only women who will follow their leads if they’re not already in complete agreement on political, sociological or religious matters. Women being submissive is entirely appropriate according to Scripture, and this wouldn’t even present an insurmountable obstacle, because women are teachable when men are good teachers . . . except that, as men age, they also tend to incrementally fine-tune expectations along these lines until they’ve narrowed and narrowed and further narrowed the number of women who could possibly meet these men’s criteria, much less have any interest in doing so.
This isn’t an argument for compromising one’s positions or values, but it is an argument for recognizing that, as one develops set opinions in the socioreligiopolitical realms (i.e., becomes set in one’s ways), one is personally responsible for how much harder that is going to make finding wives who fit the bill.
[credit: depositphotos]
Just as a man cuts his dating pool by 90% if he insists on only marrying a true blonde, or just as he further cuts the remaining 10% by another 50% if he restricts himself to marrying a woman of above-average intelligence, or just as he almost disastrously eliminates almost every other remaining marrying-age female on the planet by expecting this smart blonde cutie to have large breasts, great teeth, blue eyes and remain a virgin – so might a man be digging his own hole-of-impossibility by expecting a woman to be in lockstep with him when it comes to politics, religion and positions on farm subsidies.
And this concern shouldn’t be limited to the issue of men being too picky about potential wives – it’s also highly relevant to the attitudes we as fathers have about which men we consider worthy as potential husbands for our daughters. Don’t make the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Recently, a respected brother suggested that Male Over-Pickiness Syndrome was bad news for unmarried individuals with disabilities, and he does have a point in that regard. However, my assertion is that expecting physical- or mental-health perfection doesn’t hold a candle to the self-defeating nature of shackling ourselves with expectations that future mates entirely line up with fringe personalities or a fringe set of sociopolitical or religious belief requirements.
I promise I’m not singling out the following group for any type of condemnation, criticism or ridicule – in fact, I find them to be some of the most serious, devout and thoughtful members of the Christian community: those who identify as Hebrew Roots (aka Torah Keepers or Messianic) and place great emphasis on adhering to Old vs. New Testament restrictions. It would be nearly impossible as one who promotes biblical polygyny to fail to be aware of Hebrew Roots folks, because they’re heavily represented among polygyny supporters, which only makes sense given the obvious acceptability of polygyny in the Torah (not to mention the entire lack of condemnation of it anywhere in Scripture, but I digress).
However, no estimate of Americans who adhere to Hebrew Roots tenets has ever put that number above .02% of the population. That means less than 1 in 5000 Americans will view Yahweh and Yeshua (God and Jesus) through that lens. That doesn’t sound too bad right off the bat, but we’re also not thinking about gay marriage, so that changes one’s potential mate pool to 1 in 10,000. Obviously, this rarity is diminished even further when all the already-married opposite-sex individuals are removed, but let’s set that aside for the moment.
The real elephant in the room in a situation like this is what it means after one has calculated one’s Sexual Marketplace Value and whether or not one is a High Value Man or Woman, because when one requires that one’s mate match one’s desire in regard to a fringe personality, religious or political realm, one also has to multiply one’s SMV or Value score by the infrequency with which one can find a suitable mate.
Again, this isn’t to pick on Hebrew Roots adherents – it’s just to illustrate a point that would apply if one were only willing to date another unmarried stoner . . . or someone who plays the same video games . . . or someone who only likes the same sports teams. But in any of these cases, the effective result is that one might comfort oneself by saying that one has an SMV of 8 or 9 among Hebrew Roots folks, but in the general population one really has to divide one’s SMV or Value score by at least 5000, which effectively makes one’s marital-partner potential approach Zero.
Undeniably, the majority of women are far from being ready to be submissive wives, and the vast majority of single women are gut-level unwilling to share a husband, but even in an ideal world in which all women were so thoroughly versed in Scripture and determined to live their lives in congruence with His Word that they would be wholly open to plural marriage, we as men (and fathers of daughters) have to recognize that expecting future mates to only come from the boundaries within which we’ve placed ourselves puts us (and our daughters) in danger of making marriage a near impossibility.
In the late 1990s, I lived in Alaska. Outside of the two major cities, the bulk of Alaskans are Native Americans, and they live in villages that average 60 people. Incest had relatively recently been criminalized in Alaska, but while I was there, the Natives (a formidable political force within the state) successfully campaigned to reverse the incest laws. Why? Because there are a dozen different major tribes among the Alaska Natives with complicated relationships among them, many of which preclude intermarriage. Tribal villages are often located far away from any other same-tribe villages – sometimes remote from any other village. Therefore, if, in the average village there are only 60 people between the ages of 0 and 100, it’s often the case that the only available potential mate once one reaches marriage age is one’s own sibling. So brothers marry sisters.
[credit: collections.ushmm.org]
Every individual has every right to insist on restricting mating choices however one makes those choices – but one can’t insist that common sense or natural law or even the Will of God be turned on its head. Torah Keepers (or those who insist on blue-eyed, buxom blonde virgins): if the average man’s SMV starts out at 5, but he insists on only marrying a Hebrew Roots woman or a sexy young virgin, his SMV thus effectively changes to being a .001 score, because something like only 1 in 20,000 women will give him and his lifestyle an ounce of consideration. Needle in the haystack territory.
Round that off to the nearest hundredth of a percent, and, again, .001 is a Zero.
Even a High-Value Man who’s universally rated as a 10 SMV stands little chance of success if he binds his expectations that tightly. Every once in a while, we’ll experience seeing someone hit that kind of jackpot, which unfortunately tends to inspire most of us to eternally hope-spring (or hoop-spring), but facts is facts, and if we drastically limit our pools (or those of our daughters) then what we should really be admitting to ourselves is that we only have ourselves to blame for our inability to find wives and husbands.
[credit: linkedin]
