Mutual Need-Why Alphas Marry Betas

A scenario that often gets people’s goat is when Alphas pick Betas in the mating game.The explanation is to be found in this internet exchange:-

I Don’t Love My Fiancé Anymore, But I Need His Money, So I’m Going To Marry Him Anyway

I think about what my mother would say if she knew, and I cringe. She is a strong feminist — raised in the second wave, where things were loud and new and revolutionary — and she taught me to be the same. I love and embrace my womanhood, and I would embrace my independence along with it, if that were an option. But as of now, it is not, and I could never tell her. I couldn’t watch the way her face fell as she realized that her daughter has fallen into exactly the traps and the lifestyle that she worked so tirelessly to eradicate. She fought to live her own life on her own terms, and I am choosing the comfort and security of living someone else’s.

My fiancé is a good man, much better than I deserve. He is smart, and kind, and extremely generous — with his money, yes, but also with his time and his emotions. He is the friend who would pick you up from the middle of nowhere at three in the morning if your car ran out of gas. He would lend you whatever you needed without asking uncomfortable questions. He believes in the good in people, and life has always rewarded him for it. Until, I guess, life matched him up with me.

When we first met, I was head over heels. I was younger, just out of college, and saw the couple-years-older professional man as this port in a storm of my own recklessness. He provided a sense of warmth and familiarity that I had never known, and I was intoxicated with the feeling of playing house with someone who could actually afford to buy one. While he showed me his version of life — restaurants, shopping trips, vacations — I showed him that there was no need to be as serious and reasonable as he always insisted on being. He became just as obsessed with my frivolity as I was with his reserve.

But the feeling of comfort quickly turned into a feeling of boredom, and four years later, I am more thrilled by the prospect of a good show on TV and a glass of Chardonnay than I am about going out to yet another fancy restaurant with my picture-perfect fiancé. In the interest of not mincing words, I will simply say that I do not love him anymore. He is sweet, and does nothing wrong, and I am lulled into an emotional coma just by being around him. My care for him is near-endless, but my interest and passion are all but nonexistent. I look at him as a beloved family member, not as a life or sex partner.

I still have sex with him, of course, I just don’t enjoy it. It’s not adventurous, it’s not hot, it’s not any of the things that I used to wish for but now have grown fully accustomed to not having. While I occasionally fantasize about sex with someone who deeply excites me, I am lucky enough to have a sex drive that is low enough that I am not pushed into cheating just to fill my basic needs. More than anything, I’d like the thrill of a new first kiss, but I can live without it. I might take a lover at some point in the future, but I’m in no rush to do so at the moment.

We’re getting married in the spring, and it’s going to be beautiful. We have over 100 guests, we’ve rented the kind of Northeastern beach house that I used to dream about when thinking of my perfect, glossy-magazine wedding. There will be paper lanterns, and roast duck, and a fondant-covered cake, and a Grace Kelly dress. We will have the most talented photographer, the most delicious caterer, the most envious guests. At the end of it, I will be overwhelmed with compliments and well-wishes and comments about how wonderful my life is. They will ignore the fact that I have been struggling to make a living with my paintings for the past six years, and that my inability to support myself financially means that this wedding is as much a business deal as it is a joining of families.

I will take his last name, and his health insurance. His ring, and access to all of his bank accounts. In marrying him, I will secure a future that I could never have had otherwise, and the worst fate that I will face is being a bored housewife who resents her girlfriends who have been able to carve out a fulfilling career. My husband will treat me well, and take care of our future children, and make our perfectly-decorated house the envy of every woman in the neighborhood. I will live the life of a pampered housecat, and one day I will maybe even find a hobby or passion that will make me feel the joy of being alive again. For now, though, I will be comfortable, and that is more than many people will have.

I might never sell a single painting, but I will never be a starving artist.

Response:

Men Know That You’re Marrying Them For Their Money, They Just Don’t Care

When this article came up on my Facebook feed this morning, I laughed at the title. I thought it was going to be a satire, or a feminist critique of something — nope. It was literally a woman who is going to marry some guy because he makes a lot of money and she, being what we can only assume is a shitty artist, isn’t making any herself. As I read, I felt this indescribable sensation rise up in me. It wasn’t rage, it wasn’t indignation, it was offense at being thought of as more naive than I am.

You see, I am a guy who has a wife who needs me for my money. I’m not “that old,” only starting my 30s, and given my attractiveness/income/social status, I could definitely hold out for something else if I wanted to. But I got married at the ripe old age of 28, settling down into a life that some of my more hard-partying friends would look at as boring. She is a very nice woman, and isn’t too much of anything. She’s smart but not so smart that it becomes conniving, gentle but not matronly, organized but not one of those henpeckers who follows you around until you put your socks in the laundry basket. And, as if I even need to say it, she is gorgeous. She’s a petite, toned brunette with perky boobs and a nice butt and wonderful taste in clothes. Everything I buy for her, she looks good in. Whenever we go somewhere, my friends are jealous of me. It’s a boost of confidence that I don’t really need, but which is always nice to have.

I laughed out loud when I read that the author of that article was a few years younger than her fiancé and met him fresh out of college. It’s also unspoken but completely obvious in the article that she is a good-looking woman, and being the combination of 22, stupid, and really beautiful is the kind of thing that any buttoned-up guy with a high pressure job is going to thoroughly appreciate. Because, and I would bet money on this if someone was willing to start a pool with me, he is marrying her for reasons other than love, too. I mean, you can tell when someone doesn’t love you. The guy might not be the smartest in the world, but he’s certainly capable of telling when the spark has gone out and someone is just going through the motions — we all are. Hell, when we’re really in love, even the slightest suspicion that your partner’s interest is waning will drive you absolutely insane. The guy is likely like many guys in his case, an overworked businessman who is looking for a convenient scenario.

There is a reason guys who work all the time are with women who need their money. With our money, we purchase the beautiful wife that fulfills that area of our life, and they get to have all of the things and the comfort that they couldn’t provide on their own. It’s not new, it’s not shocking, and there’s nothing immoral about it. People look for relationships that fill their needs, and a man who works 60 hours a week isn’t going to want a financially independent ball-buster who is going to be just as constantly stressed as he is. You know what the best part of my day is? Coming home to a dinner that my wife has prepared that afternoon and having her talk about the little bullshit errands she ran. It’s the most relaxing, reliable part of my life, and to watch a beautiful woman take care of me in exchange for me taking care of her is something better than fighting to make something work because it’s “passionate love.”

Chances are, she probably does love her fiancé, just like I love my life. It’s just a different kind of love, the kind you might not easily recognize. It’s an agreement, and it’s allowing the other person to be the yin to your yang because you know that you are not in the position to have any other kind of relationship. My wife could have a lot of other guys, and I could have a lot of other women. She could probably find some other six-figure salary that lets her teach yoga four times a week and consider that her career, but she chose mine. I could probably find some other woman to cook me dinner and look amazing in yoga pants, but I chose her. And even if it’s not romantic, I assure you that it is what a lot of marriages are made of.