Is a men following the ERE Lifestyle More Attractive?

[lillo9546]

This idea may be worth exploring to gain a better understanding of how the ERE lifestyle affects a person's social market value (SMV).

The SMV scale measures the attractiveness of men and women based on their physical appearance, financial status, and social standing.

For men, high SMV is often associated with having good looks, financial resources, and a high social status (LMS).

While there is extensive information available about the SMV scale online, it is worth considering whether the ERE lifestyle could potentially lower a man's SMV due to certain factors or, conversely, increase his SMV by cultivating qualities that are unique to this lifestyle, such as stoicism and other personal attributes that are developed through living simply and responsibly.
Also, if an High SMV men will actract and correspond to certain people, which people will an ERE men actract instead?

It would be amazing to share anyone POV on this!

[zbigi]

Generally, it will lower the value, at least according to your definition. ERE man will have more money than most, but won't spend it, and will actually appear to be a pauper. His social standing also usually won't be high, because he won't have a conventional successful career, which is the easiest source of "status" in our society. He might gain the status via some other path when already retired, but most probably won't.
On the other hand, once one is retired already, ERE should help improve social attractiveness, because of more sleep, better nutrition and more time and energy for excercise.

[Jean]

I am very attractive.

[loutfard]

The SMV scale measures the attractiveness of men and women based on their physical appearance, financial status, and social standing.

Thinking of mating as one market might be an oversimplification.

Think of actions that will make you less attractive to the greatest common denominator, but more so to a smaller (slice of the) market.

[Ego]

The most valuable potential partners can smell a believer in Social Market Value from far away and will eliminate you as a potential partner once they get a whiff.

[suomalainen]

You’re a pot looking for a lid that fits, not any lid that’ll have you. Have some self respect.

[Henry]

If it is true, maybe JLF will move from the NY Times to People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful.

[lillo9546]

You’re a pot looking for a lid that fits, not any lid that’ll have you. Have some self respect.

Please explain this better

[loutfard]

Please explain this better

This "social market value" premise is fundamentally flawed. Not just useless, but actively harmful. Especially to eremites. Jump for joy and toss SMV aside!

[suomalainen]

Trying to be more attractive to women gives their opinion about you more weight than your own. And why? You don’t even know them. Why care about their opinion at all? It’s because you’re insecure and have no self-respect and no one respects that.

So first order of business is to settle into yourself. Know thyself, accept thyself and respect/like thyself. And then find a woman who likes you when you are being you. You don't need to peacock around like a desperate loser trying to impress a woman you don’t even know. It’s, frankly, pathetic. And the type of woman who is impressed by peacocking is also, frankly, pathetic. Why would you want anything to do with such a shallow woman?

If you’re just trying to get laid, stop. Satisfying your sex drive isn’t worth sacrificing your self-respect.

[7Wannabe5]

I've been attempting to make a list of worthwhile books to read on the topic of sex/sexuality, and this is proving to be a somewhat surprisingly, fairly difficult task given the importance of the matter in most of our lives. So, I recently picked up, "The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating" by David Buss, PhD Evolutionary Psychologist, UT Austin, University of Michigan.( My point in highlighting his professional credentials is that I wanted to be able to find fault in his research technique as I read along, but overall I found it pretty solid, and I also found his own perspective on the results to be reasonably thoughtful, even-handed, and objective. IOW, he made his personal bias clear, and made it easy to correct for his personal bias, etc.)

It's difficult to read a work that outlines research on what humans generally find attractive in other humans, because there are bound to be revelations that make us personally feel either a bit smug or a bit defensive, because we are all quite vulnerable in this realm. Anyways, here's a bit that popped out at me for obvious reasons:

One key benefit of casual sex to women is immediate access to resources. Imagine a food shortage hitting an ancestral tribe thousands of years ago. Game is scarce. The first frost has settled ominously. Bushes no longer yield berries. A lucky hunter takes down a deer. A woman watches him return from the hunt, hunger pangs gnawing. She flirts with him. Although they do not discuss any explicit exchange, her sexual enticements makes him more than willing to provide her with a portion of the deer meat. Sex for resources, or resources for sex- the two have been exchanged in millions of transactions over the millenia of human existence...

Modern women's preferences in a lover provide psychological clues to the evolutionary history of the material and economic benefits women gained from brief sexual encounters. Women especially value four characteristics in temporary lovers more than in committed mates- spending a lot of money on them from the beginning, giving them gifts from the beginning, having an extravagant lifestyle, and being generous with their resources. Women judge these attributes to be mildly desirable in husbands, but quite desirable in casual sex partners. Women dislike frugality and signs of stinginess in a lover; these qualities signal that the man is reluctant to devote an immediate supply of resources. These psychological preferences reveal that securing immediate resources is a key adaptive benefit that women secure through affairs."

Similarly, men prefer signs of chastity/fidelity in a long-term committed partner, but prefer signals of more easy sexual availability from a short term partner. However, men also do not prefer frigidity in a long-term partner. IOW, in terms of the most sex variant properties of attraction, both sexes (in heterosexual relationship) when shopping for a long-term partner prefer one with a goodly supply of the resource they desire and a strong willingness to share within the relationship, and a strong reserve against sharing outside of the relationship. Of course, as Buss notes over and over again, although his results hold up quite well cross-culturally, humans are highly adaptable, so they may vary a good deal based on context. For example, in Scandanavia, men hold a much lower than average preference for long-term partners who are chaste, because Scandanavian women don't have to be chaste, so they choose not to be, so there aren't very many chaste Scandanavian women to choose. In a sense, the Scandanavian governments provide most of the benefits of long-term sexual partner, so Scandanavian women might be more likely to choose for the features more preferred in short-term partners such as short-term resource generousity, and highly masculine features and behavior.

Anyways, psychological tendencies inherited through evolution aren't a law on human behavior. You can choose to transcend them, to the extent that you first accept them for what they are on the level that they do exist. For example, Bus goes into great detail about how the unpleasant emotion of jealousy was likely adaptive, but notes that within the context of those who practice polyamory it may be transcended to some extent.

IOW, when seeking either short-term or long-term heterosexual female partners, signaling that you have resources and you are willing to share those resources is a key factor in acquiring a mate according to the best research available. The frugal man is better able to signal willingness to share over the long run with a long-term partner rather than over the short term with a short term partner. However, this problem could also likely be solved with some creativity and consciousness of context and as noted by many above through seeking those who are more compatible in resource preferences and sharing mechanism preferences. For example, since overtly mascuiine features and behavior are also more preferenced by women in short term relationships (maybe because primitive women sometimes looked to men for protection in the short term or maybe because more overtly masculine behavior is less desirable in long-term nesting together context, or ??) working on evincing more overt masculinity might be another successful strategy for attracting women for short-term engagements. OTOH, another interesting note was that men who are successful "mate poachers", obtaining sex from women who are already in a committed relationship, sometimes succeed by exhibiting more stereotypically feminine traits. Another strategy that would likely be successful would be to place yourself in a context where although you are frugal, the other men around you are actually impoverished.

IMO, the most high functioning, consistent way to transcend this as a frugal man would be to display your skill-set as a resource (fanning your WOG out like a peacock's tail) along with signaling a willingness to share those resources in exchange for sexual access, but not in a manner that will make you seem uncouth due to your lack of subtle charm. For example, having the willingness and ability to pull over on the side of the road and help an attractive female fix her car problem will increase your attractiveness and your access. Behaving as though you deserve sexual favors for fixing a flat will have the opposite result. This is why mentioning or overtly behaving as though you believe in SMV will also have opposite result. It's like if a woman with large breasts were to walk into a bar and declare "I have large breasts! Who wants to buy me a drink?" Okay, no, on second thought, that analogy does not exactly work....but I think you can see what I mean.

Also, in practical terms, the fact that most modern women view educational attainment as a resource, and more women than men attend college thesedays, puts any man with an advanced degree (many/most members of this forum) well ahead of the pack on that basis alone. It might be interesting to pool the experiences of the FIRE/ERE groups towards perhaps determining whether heterosexual females respond more to the attainment or active ambition in the various forms of resources. The general evidence would seem to point towards a preference for men at or near the peak of their performance in resource acquisition in terms of age alone. IOW, men are viewed as most attractive around the age range they could likely most successfully hunt based on terms of both vigor/strength and skill/experience, whereas women are viewed as most attractive around the age of peak fertility. This is likely why generally men exhibit relatively much lower concern about their potential female partner's financial resource base. It would have only rarely been a successful evolutionary strategy to form a long-term relationship with an older female with an extensive resource base. In fact, when men are attracted to older women it is generally because of perception of increased sexual availabilty rather than due to increased resource base. And, we can also see little evidence of the frugal, hyper-rational heterosexual men on this forum choosing to follow such a strategy, even though it could obviously greatly speed up their progress towards FI. IOW, the fact that you can't completely rationalize desire holds true even for the hyper-rational.

[7Wannabe5]

You don't need to peacock around like a desperate loser trying to impress a woman you don’t even know.

Especially if you already are a tall, well-educated, good-looking, affluent man in his most productive mid-years.

Of course, further quite important note would be that humans of both sexes highly value intelligence and kindness in a mate. So, one could also always punch harder on the human rather than the more sex variant attractors. Now that I think about it that could be a huge benefit of being bi-sexual.

[suomalainen]

Yes, I understand my N=1 may be skewed. But have you also seen the female delusion calculator? Something like 80% of women say they want a man who fits a certain description, which is like .05% of the male population.

[jacob]

I posit that one's SMV is inversely proportional to how much time one spends on websites talking about SMV.

Desperation seems to be huge counter-indicator to SMV. People can smell this from a mile away. The irony is that the less you care about [SMV], the higher it likely gets. (Note the causative direction here. It's not that people, who have it, stop caring about it, aka privilege. It's the other way around. People who stop caring about it, automagically get it.)

I suspect there is a bit of Goodhart's law in there. SMV might have been a valid measure once. However, as soon as it became known, it started to attract the more desperate people, who mainly wanted to game [it]. This in turn ruined the measure. For example, it used to be that only people with success in the form of status and wealth bought fancy cars. As fancy cars became correlated with success, desperate people started buying fancy cars on credit in order to portray success. This ultimately led to a situation where the most, who drive fancy cars, are clowns signalling desperation and financial weakness.

[7Wannabe5]

Yes, I understand my N=1 may be skewed. But have you also seen the female delusion calculator? Something like 80% of women say they want a man who fits a certain description, which is like .05% of the male population.

Absolutely, but this fact recommends that you will benefit in the market by focusing on how your competitors are behaving irrationally, not by not focusing on how your customers are behaving. For terrible example which I am happy to report has actually improved in recent years, when I first started dating after my divorce, I noticed that my peer group of online-dating local competitors was highly racist. A man could have every other attractive quality, but simply the color of his skin could eliminate him from the running with my female cohort. So, I was able to pick up some stunning bargains on the market in alignment with how my values system actually varied from that of my cohort, because I think it is stupid and despicable to discriminate on the basis of race. In fact, this realization left me with a lowered level of respect in general for my female cohort.

Conversely, for example, I would currently not be able to do nearly as well by focusing only on the sub-set of men who actually sexually prefer women as chubby as I am currently. Yes, I could certainly find a lid for my pot such-as-it-is, but I would be contracting my pool of choice rather than expanding it. It is also the case that if I was Woman of Steel in terms of emotional "differentiation", I could also rationally choose to obtain very attractive short-term-only sexual partners who greatly preferred women who are more slim, but, hey, "Any port in a storm." or even a long-term partner who values me more for my intelligence and kindness than my sexual attractiveness. IOW, I could purely seek the "value" of an extremely attractive partner absent the validation of my own physical attractiveness. What I wouldn't rationally choose to do is behave in a delusional manner, demanding the right to be deemed generally highly sexually attractive in a context in which I clearly wasn't. Since giving the appearance of "too stingy" as a man seems to me to be something that could be fairly easily "fixed" towards exhibiting something more like "open-hearted frugality", it would seem to me to be more advisable to attempt to bring to the customer base what she all wants. Roughly analogous to how I might reasonably readily transform "too chubby" into "healthy yet voluptuous." And, in fact, it has been my experience that when I signal "healthy, yet voluptuous, 5'9'" even some men who literally typed something like "I don't want to insult anybody, but I really prefer very petite women." on his dating profile will sometimes find me quite physically attractive.

It seems to me that men would be best served by accepting the extent to which women more greatly value resource-display in a mate to the extent that they personally exhibit (rather than admit) a greater preference for youth, beauty, good figure, but with an eye towards at least two-step strategy and self-awareness. For example, there are always a lot of younger men hitting on older women on dating sites, but because they perceive that their odds might be better with older women, because they themselves find older women less attractive, and they don't recognize that unlike men, women don't find younger partners more attractive, they send out terribly mixed signals. For hilarious example, one youth with whom I made the mistake of chatting briefly inquired whether I might be willing to drive over to his apartment and pick up a pizza on my way. OTOH, one significantly younger man I did consider for a short-term partner, even though he was also skinnier than me, was a highly intelligent, overt Japanese Dom with some interesting skills who approached me in a light, respectful manner. In fact, I could generalize that any young man stuck in the rut of being deemed less attractive due to youth and lack of resources would do well to acquire high degree of skill in at least one focused area that requires social interaction to some degree. For simple, stereotype because true example, become a tennis pro.

[7Wannabe5]

I suspect there is a bit of Goodhart's law in there. SMV might have been a valid measure once. However, as soon as it became known, it started to attract the more desperate people, who mainly wanted to game [it]. This in turn ruined the measure. For example, it used to be that only people with success in the form of status and wealth bought fancy cars. As fancy cars became correlated with success, desperate people started buying fancy cars on credit in order to portray success. This ultimately led to a situation where the most, who drive fancy cars, are clowns signalling desperation and financial weakness.

Yes, this is very true, but it doesn't alter the underlying reality that the choosiest women are still looking for some kind of signal, now made more subtle. For example, all of the cross-cultural studies Buss made/included indicated that women are attracted to men who wear expensive clothing for both short-term and long-term mating purposes. However, some women have the cultural or experiential backround that allows them to sort for "flash" or very specific signals of resource correlation more than other women, and there are all sorts of gradients of this. For example, and I kid you not, a man's choice in shoes might signal "bad in bed", "likely a liar", "wealthy, but boring", or "read too many articles on the topic of SMV" to an intuitive female. OTOH, it has been my experience that it is very unlikely that a man will intuit "reads too many books about sexual evolutionary psychology" based on how I dress for a date, even if I literally say "I am wearing this red t-shirt, because of something I read in a book about sexual evolutionary psychology." and record his response in a spread-sheet on my phone. Upon reflection, this is probably because I am signaling "curious" with a side of "kooky" more than "desperate."

[jacob]

Yes, this is very true, but it doesn't alter the underlying reality that the choosiest women are still looking for some kind of signal, now made more subtle.

Not being desperate/being comfortable with oneself is perhaps the most subtle signal there is.

[7Wannabe5]

Not being desperate/being comfortable with oneself is perhaps the most subtle signal there is.

True, but this is almost always in direct proportion to our ability to manifest self-aware, self-care, which may vary over time and context and with transition. For example, very few humans are super confidant about their signaling right after they pop out of a "failed" long-term monogamous relationship. The desire to spiff yourself up a bit for the market is fairly universal. That is why the players often prey on this group. Also, why the rule-of-thumb advice is to avoid getting into another long-term relationship until you are out of (2 months X each year of relationship) rebound period.

It's also the case that being in a context/market in which you face overwhelming rejection will eventually serve to erode the confidence, increase the desperation, of even the most inherently secure among us. For simple example, what if somebody hacked your video game so it no longer played in the manner which you expected? It might take a bit of a doubling-down losing spiral before you regained your confidence as a player. I see this as a real problem for many men of my generation who are currently out on the dating market, although they often manifest it as anger at the game rather than lack of confidence in themselves. What do women want? Who the fuck knows.

[Sclass]

Interesting.

I never found any of this stuff to be simple in reality. There is so much variability from person to person. Rules are for those idiots making pickup videos. We had that gang of guys when I was a kid. The players. Ironically one of the loneliest friends I have was the player in college. Yes he can get laid anytime anywhere (like the laundromat) but he’s been through three marriages and his latest wife is an 18 yo he personally imported from the Philippines. He’s vague about how they met and her age. She’s 18. And he’s lonely…at least that’s the feeling my wife and I get when he comes over for dinner (we were classmates in the 1990s).

I guess movies and TV can be some indication as to what the vast majority wants.

The question I ask myself is do I want to be affiliated/accepted by the vast majority? Is there some benefit in this?

There was a time when I was young where I’d change my politics be by a particular love interest. Now that just seems like too big an expenditure of energy.

Selectivity is just a part of being a highly evolved animal. Pleasing everyone sounds too hard. Costs energy and money.

I recall a few love interests telling me I was the biggest cheapskate they knew. “Eww yuck, Sclass you cannot get a dollar out of him!” Probably better we didn’t hook up. My younger self didn’t know any better because sexual attraction was higher on the list than long term stability.

Thanks to the internet I can see what those “hot tickets” are up to now. It isn’t pretty. Some other unlucky dude(s) got them.

[7Wannabe5]

The question I ask myself is do I want to be affiliated/accepted by the vast majority? Is there some benefit in this?

Probably not. However, this doesn't speak to the issue of being accepted by somebody of the opposite sex in the ways that they are variant from your own sex in terms of what they find attractive. I believe being/becoming empthetic to this is kind of key, although any given individual or couple can go along merrily oblivious of what underlying factors are making their successful relationship(s) successful for decades, until a speed bump comes along. For example, and I might simply be more oblivious than the average heterosexual female, I really didn't grok just how deeply visual many/most men are in terms of their attraction until I read several books on the topic while also "experimenting" in the dating field. It was kind of mind-blowing to realize that, like nany/most women, I thought men were being superficial for being so visually motivated, in part because I am less visually motivated/deeply-wired as a female. IOW, I realized that the alternative way of viewing this would be to recognize that human males have no more control over this than a dog has over being more scent oriented than a human. So, then I was able to better empathize along the lines of "What would this room smell like if I was a dog?" It even helped me have less of a jealous reaction over stuff like noticing a partner notice the sexy waitress.

So, I encourage men to do similar research experiements towards getting more empathetically in touch with how female attraction works differently. I think it might be the case that many heterosexual men hold more resistance against empathetically imagining what sort of man they would like to fuck them if they were a woman, so just kind of blur it out to the "nice guy" they would like to see their favorite sister marry and never fuck.