On my article, The Dangers of Marrying Older Women: Early 30s vs. Early 40s, Jessica left a really interesting comment about why it may be a good idea to go for women who rapidly approach the end of their fertility window. Her comment is really interesting, and it provides a perspective I had not considered before. She wrote:
I don’t disagree what Aaron said, however, I do wish to add something. While it is true that if a man marries a 33-year old, he will soon get a rapidly aging woman, nevertheless, if the woman is attractive, he could in theory have gotten good genes, as in, beauty for his children, at a discounted price. A woman in her 30s tends to be a bit desperate and is likely to lower her standards or make compromises. When the same woman is still young, in her early 20s, she will be such hot stuff that she will be out of his reach. At 33, she no longer is in such great demand. Yet her genes remain the same. His offspring would be equally beautiful regardless of when she got pregnant. Yes, there might be some issues with egg quality but at early 30s, it’s not that bad yet.
I do not know if Jessica really is a woman, but I would not be surprised if she was. If so, she is a very rational one, the kind you rarely encounter in the wild. Most Western women would have a hard time accepting any of the statement she makes, and even claim that women only get hotter the older they get, or that women can even be attractive in their 50s, just as they can have children anytime they want. Reality, though, is a lot closer to Jessica’s perspective.
Objectively, I think Jessica is correct. Wooing an attractive woman in her early 30s could indeed provide a pathway into a better gene pool. This is not a view people normally have, though. Men see a hot woman and want to fuck her. Sometimes, they even bang hot sluts without a condom, ignoring the probability of getting her pregnant or the possibility that they may catch an STD. When women want to bang a Chad, they also think like that, but on top they want a provider for the support he can offer. Still, in both cases the thinking is more about instant gratification or short-term benefits, rarely extending a few years into the future. The genetic perspective is sill very valid, though. On a side note, the only woman I know who ever explicitly spoke about gene quality happens to be my wife. As others have remarked, the offspring of white and Asia parents, in particular daughters, tend to be quite attractive. If you are an Asian woman and you want your daughters to look like fairy-tale princesses then getting some decent white-guy genes would be a great move.
From a male perspective, regardless of the race issue, it also true that you want your children to be good looking. Of course, they should not only be good looking, but good looks are correlated with many other positive aspects, such as good health, good mental health, higher intelligence, and so on. Thus, if you are a guy you may as well be a bit calculating and realistically assess the gene quality you can get. It is arguably true that if you are fine with a woman in her early 30s you could get better-quality genes because her relative sexual market value is below that of a younger woman. You can also tell if a woman in her early 30s used to be really good-looking in the past. In fact, some of her feature may be even more pronounced. I once met a woman who was in her early to mid-30s. She was thin, tall, and had model-like high cheekbones. As she had lost some subcutaneous fat in her face, her high cheekbones were even more pronounced.
As good as Jessica’s idea as at first sight, I think there are some practical difficulties. The most important one is that a woman who used to be really attractive will have certain expectations. There is normally a time-lag between a woman’s self-image and reality. To her, she does not look like she does. Instead, her self-image is closer to her looks at her absolute peak or at least to her looks a few years ago. Of course, if such a woman was able to assess her situation objectively, she would not reject potential suitors. Instead of thinking that five years ago, she had months-long affairs with multi-millionaires, she will look at the accountant standing in front of her, and concluding that he may be her best option.
The biggest counter-argument against Jessica’s idea is that a formerly-beautiful-and-still-fairly-attractive 30-year-old woman will likely not be able to assess reality objectively. If that had been the case, she would have cashed in on her looks in her early 20s or her mid-20s at the latest. Yet, she was holding out for someone better or hotter, until it was too late and she entered her 30s alone and desperate. I really like the idea Jessica presented, but I do not think it is realistic. There may be rare exceptions, e.g. an attractive woman marrying young and her husband dying, but for the most part, I see only two scenarios for still-attractive 30-year-olds. First, they still believe that they are 20 years old and can have any guy. They are just going through a rough time at the moment. These women would not entertain the thought of settling down with the kind of guy they would not have given the time of day a few years ago. Second, they understand that their market value is lower so they have to settle, but if they were able to think this rationally, they would not have ended up where they are. Consequently, these women do not exist. For the very most part, still-attractive 30-year-old women who could offer great genes at a discount believe they are above some average guy. Quite frankly, from a genetic perspective they are right.
On a final note, I think that genetic quality is obvious well into high age, even for women. Perhaps, it is particularly obvious for women because many age so poorly. There are old women you look at and you immediately see that a few decades ago they must have been absolute stunners. I once had a female colleague in her late-40s who was like that. She worked with a few women in their 20s and they treated her very poorly. Male colleagues went out of their way to treat this older woman well or chit-chat with her for a bit, and she had a really pleasant personality. In contrast, the other women were just there, barely rising above the level of background noise. For an example that is perhaps easier to visualize, look at Joanna Lumley, who plays Aunt Emma in The Wolf of Wall Street. In that movie she is in her late-60s, yet you immediately see that she must have quite attractive when she was young, and you can easily verify this by looking up pictures of her in her 20s.
“an attractive woman marrying young and her husband dying”
I’ve heard that some women in these cases never got over the husband’s death, and spent the rest of their life unmarried. Can we say this is proof of “True Love”? I’d like to think so, but maybe that is just naïve optimism on my part. I suppose there is already a term for this though; “Alpha Widow”.
Isn’t “alpha widow” the concept that a woman who has once banged a Chad compares all guys afterwards to him or, worse, compares all guys she meets to a composite of the best aspect of all the guys she has ever banged?
This article is the reason why GoodLookingAndSleazy would’ve married early-30s Gwen Stefani in a heartbit. Hah! Whether she would’ve chosen him instead of the semi-famous musicians she ended up settling down with is another issue…
More seriously though, the problem with this line of thought is that it’s kind of specific. For a woman in her early 30’s to be a “genetic catch at a discount”, I think several conditions must be met:
– Not crazy.
– Beautiful, obviously.
– Career-oriented, because that’s about the only rational explanation for her delaying of children.
And that’s leaving out the “not having children from another man” angle that is so obvious to us now. Because career-oriented women who had a pregnancy in her teens/early 20s abound.
@Manuel,
Hey man, she would have chosen ME!! 😁
Gavin is a literal fag. Blake is cool, but caught her after she hit the wall. Plus, he was heartbroken himself.
Some guys think there are the no nice women out there. That they are all the same. All bitches. I am not one of these men.
The funniest thing about my obsession with Gwen is that I’m actually a breast man 😂
The self-image lag is a good way to think of it. I didn’t think of that.
Basically single older women’s “criteria” grows as a function of time much quicker than their realization that their value is dropping.
It also doesn’t help that they confuse experience with value. They (through projection) believe that their added years of experience makes them more valuable than a 19 year old, which isn’t the case.
So you come to a weird paradox where a 33 year old has higher criteria than a hotter, tighter newer model.
After posting this article I realized why Jessica’s hypothesis never occurred to me. Her position seems to be a theoretical one. In theory, I think she is completely right. However, in reality women just do not behave like that. Such women still have an inflated sense of their desirability. I refer to this as time lag between self-image and reality. By the time these women would consider a man lower in looks they are already in their 40s, and even less desirable. If women behaved the way Jessica hypothesized, then both men and women would be better off, i.e. these women past their prime would still find a decent-enough man, and those guys would be happy as they could get someone who would otherwise be out of their league.
The part of Jessicas theory that doesnt fully add up to me is that if a woman has good genes, and as a consequence is likely to remain beautiful for longer, I am not sure she will be at much of a discount. If she still looks notieceably better than her age peers, I think she will correspondingly still be enjoying more male attention than the rest of the women her age.
Also, the time window of remaining fertility will be closing fast, so you wont be able to have as many offspring with her as you otherwise would. And getting her pregnant, carrying the pregnancy to term, and giving birth to a healthy baby are all things that get more and more difficult in the latter part of said fertility window.
There are few cases I can think of where women have improved their looks with age past the wall. These were cases where she was overweight, or had some health condition in her youth, and managed to fix it by the time she was getting close to 30. Or she was living in an unhealthy way, and did some significant life changes. A girl I know used to be kind of slutty in her youth, ended up marrying a devout catholic guy and transformed herself. As far as i can tell, 3 children later their marriage is still going strong.
Does the Catholic guy have any clue whatsoever about her past?
Well, I suppose “Forgiveness” is a big part of Christianity after all. But I would hope there’s no deception going on here.
Catholics practicing their own faith? Damn that’s a rarity in the US. I was actually raised Mormon. Never seen such a gaggle of drunks, smokers, curse words, and gambling.
Indeed. When I was a child, I was among those few actually sincere practicing Catholics. I didn’t just “believe” and thought that was good enough. I did my best to put the scripture into practice in my daily life. (which includes refraining/minimizing masturbation to the best of my ability. I even tried to plead with “god” that I promise I will forever refrain from whacking it if he made the bullies go away. LOL!) I was a goody two shoes in almost every sense of the word, and I’m sure my mom wished I grew up maintaining that blind sheeplike obedience.
And then I got bullied mercilessly in school because of that. I had enough size and strength to bulldoze through probably 95-98% of the bullies (The last fight I ever got into was against one of those 1-2%, which I won spectacularly by combining brain AND brawn. I wish I did that sooner. smashing the baddest bully of the entire high school the way I did really did result in all the bullies not wanting another crack at me.) but because I was brainwashed with that “turn the other cheek” BS alongside being told by nearly every selfish ass fuckface teacher in the school that fighting back would be the “wrong” thing to do, I suffered for years…until I stopped giving a shit and finally started fighting back.
This also resulted in me actually becoming skeptical and distrustful of everything I was ever taught by my “superiors”, and started researching the subject and meeting Atheists online (at a time before it was “cool” to be an Atheist. they were some of the most genuine people I have ever met in my life. wherever they are now, I wish them the best). Eventually, I too came to the conclusion that Atheism is the logical conclusion.
And then the irony is that I get some folks in my case, shoving “Pascal’s Wager” (this is a mercenary position, not a sincere belief) at me. yet when I look at them and the way they live, almost none of them were anywhere near as sincere in practicing the belief as kid me. they might as well BE Atheists with how they carry themselves in their daily life.
I understand that a decent percentage of the regulars on this blog are religious however. I have no interest in debating the subject, just sharing my story.
@ Maou,
About bullying. Yes, the yard duties would always say “get us if someone starts a fight.” I would always respond, “How can I do that when I’m on my back?” Fighting is definitely necessary sometimes.
Some women certainly manage to turn their life around, but there are limits to that. For instance, tattoos are hard to undo, and so is the damage from earlobe plugs. I knew a girl who said she was a fat teenager, but then she got her act together and lost her excess weight. However, her skin was a lot flabbier than it should have been. She was not even in her 20s, but she had a bit of a double chin, for instance, due to how stretched out her skin used to be.