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Amazing. A way of life that has literally no evidence of existing prior to the Industrial Revolution, must, in fact, be the ancestral environment we evolved in, because why else would we be acting that way now? Talk about people living in the "eternal present;" marriage has been about personal fulfilment for about the past 70 years or so, therefore it must always have been that way. Surely we should ask why, were this were the case, then why is it not working? Why is fertility collapsing, why are men and women just completely checking out, why are they increasingly neurotic? No, we cannot ask that, because it simply must be the case that men have to be chad for women, pay no attention to all recorded history showing marriage being controlled by family, with archeological evidence and oral traditions/myths (as well as extant hunter gatheres) indicating this is the same for pre-history.
Courtship isn't exactly a modern invention in the last 70 years. It happens in observed and studied hunter gathering tribes and we have records of it in every civilization. It happens in other closely related species and we have many of the sexual dimorphic characteristics, concealed ovulation and year-round female receptivity, classic to pair bonding species.
The actual makeup of the social roles certainly change but I think they broadly almost always fit the model I proposed above. Especially for men who in practically every society I've heard of are expected to prove themselves worthy through successfully demonstrating merit in some way. Which hunter gathering societies exactly do you observe male sexual success decouple from the ability to navigate the sexual market place? Of which being impressive to a girl's parents would certainly be an example. What do you even think status is? If what it took to get paired with a high status and attractive woman was very legible do you not think men would endeavor to game whatever the system was?
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