Monkeybranching: The Female Perspective
A woman explains why women view monkeybranching as a moral imperative
I took the liberty of collating a series of highly informative comments made by one of the female commenters here in response to last week’s post on monkeybranching and lightly editing them to provide a coherent perspective. I think it’s absolutely vital for men to read this, particularly Bravos, Deltas, and Gammas, because it should illuminate why it is absolutely futile to impose a male framework on female actions.
I’m a bit baffled to learn that men think monkey branching behavior is immoral.
None of the women I was close to in college when we were all looking for husbands considered themselves off the market until they got engaged. Nobody two-timed, but dumping a guy because you had a better option wasn’t just morally neutral, it was considered the moral thing to do. “It’s not nice to keep leading him on when you’re more interested in someone else.”
For a young woman, staying with her boyfriend when someone else has piqued her interest would have been immoral lying-by-omission about her continued interest level in her boyfriend. Seeing that she can get interest from a higher-status guy, will make her viscerally dislike her current boyfriend even if she was super into him before.
By the time women are 23, they are a full 10 years into competitive boy-attracting. And the 18-23 range is prime husband finding time. College is the prime husband finding place. “Getting an MRS degree” is good and important. She’s also at the height of her appeal and has probably traded 1-2 levels up from her high school boyfriend. She’s testing to see how high a guy she can land at exactly the right time to do so.
It is utterly irrelevant how damaging it is to the man to be dumped for another guy. Vox is again correct that among nice girls they see it as nice and moral, because once they’ve lost attraction for you it would be mean and not nice to stay with you.
Among bitchy girls, it’s your own fault for being a loser and dating above your level. In their view, as much as it hurts to be dumped, would you really want to be saddle for life with the bitterness and resentment of a woman who knew she could have done better than you? She’s sparing you a life time of sorrow.
A young woman is meeting lots of young men all the time. Feeling out if a higher-caliber man is interested in her would be the impetus for dumping the lower-caliber boyfriend. But if she’s putting out feelers to guys above her grade, she’ll sense the lack of interest, and know that she’s maxed out with her current guy. Then she settles down with the guy she’s with because she’s landed on the most attractive man who is also attracted to her.
It sucks for the boyfriend to get dumped. And it’s not classy if she’s sizing up interest from other guys in front of him. But wouldn’t it be worse for her to stay and waste his time when she’s getting feedback that she can do better?
Young women are always getting interest from men, and because there is no ring, they don’t know you have a boyfriend at the outset. If the interest you’re getting is triggering “I can do better” feelings about your current guy, the ethical thing is to dump him.
I understand that it’s hurtful to be dumped for a higher=caliber guy. And tmen are absolutely entitled to their hurt feelings. But I’m still not seeing how men, as a class, would view it as morally wrong for a woman to dump a guy because she is more interested in the attention she is getting from elsewhere.
Unless “immoral” means “hurt my feelings.”
You can only trust the woman you’re dating if she thinks that you’re the best she can do. She won’t tell you this, of course, because it might make you think that she thinks that you can do better than her., and then you’ll consider that you can do better than her. Yes, women try to read minds this much.
It’s not “how can I trust such a woman?” It’s “how can I trust any woman?” All of them are doing this. Some are more subtle than others. Some will jump ship earlier into “you could do better” feedback than others. But all of the women are rating all of the men who show interest in them against their boyfriend until they find the best guy they can land and settle down with.
Outlander and 50 Shades of Grey is highly successful lady-porn for a reason.
I have not read all of the comments, so I do not know if this was covered already. I will, nonetheless, hoist the flag and see if anyone salutes.
The issue here is that all women’s mating/dating decisions are still done under the auspices of the Sexual Revolution. The Sexual Revolution was and is, the separation of sex and marriage. Before it, if a man wanted sex on a regular basis, he had to be married. Sex out-of-wedlock was frowned upon and the risk of pregnancy and social shaming was too great for both parties to take.
After the Sexual Revolution, this changed. Sex out-of-wedlock became more readily available, but with it came an “emergent property” that was quite unexpected.
It went something like this:
A man cannot date a woman out of his league.
A man cannot have sex with a woman out of his league.
A man cannot marry a woman out of his league.
Conversely,
A woman cannot marry a man out of her league
BUT she can date and have sex with a man out of her league.
The entire relationship dynamic between men and women is colored by this emergent property. Women do not understand that the market for sex and the market for marriage are two distinct markets. They do not cross. No amount of easy dating and sexual activity will convert into a long-term relationship or marriage with a man that is out of your league. Their “monkey branching” is, therefore, just “riding the carousel.”
Sure, this would not be so bad if women discovered this error at 23 and course corrected. But, no, riding the carousel continues until she ages past her peak years of attractiveness and fertility, until the pool of men that she became attracted to shrinks to nothing. At that point, she is doomed to pretty much being alone.
Another problem we could all just avoid if we used courting and arranged marriages instead of dating.