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Status is a person's placement in a social hierarchy. Most people don't think in terms of status, they simply feel shame or embarrassment when it is taken from them or pride and confidence when they take it. You don't need to think about becoming more popular by taking it from others - simply by being more popular you do so inevitably. Just because it isn't a concious effort doesn't mean you don't care about status.
Re banging your wife, we can add your peer group to the dynamic - do you think their opinion of you would change at all if I banged your wife in front of them? It might not affect their opinion of your competence, but I bet it affects their respect for you - but status is an element even between the three of us original parties - you me and your wife. If you walked in on that what would you think my opinion of you was? Would it be different from before you entered the room? What about your wife - if you saw that would you immediately assume she loved you as much as she did on your wedding day? If not, you do care about status.
I guess, among the people I spend time with (friends, family, coworkers), it does not feel to me like status is very coherent concept. Like, at work, there is a formal hierarchy whereby a manager has more power than those beneath them, but plenty of non-managers will be deferred to over managers. Moreover, who is deferred to is subject-dependent and, even there, we talk about things says more about who acts most confident and is more argumentative. None of the above is really related to how much people talk to you at lunch or who gets invited to socialize after work. So, to summarize:
And even on that last point, much more of the variance is related to whether you display an interest in talking about non-work things or an interest in hanging out outside work.
Moreover, there are clear cliques, and I don't really get a sense that some cliques are preferable to others. Cliques are, as far as I can tell, the opposite of a status hierarchy: a group of peers socializes frequently because of idiosyncratic socializing value they provide each other (e.g. shared interest, complementary personalities, etc)
Personally, I don't really have a desire to be "popular" - I have a desire for specific people to continue liking me or, occasionally, start liking me.
Among friends and family, I'd say a "status hierarchy" is even less coherent.
I will admit that, in high school and for dating, I do think there is some coherence in a hierarchy of sorts, but I have not experienced that dynamic much outside those contexts.
I think their opinion of you and me would both change pretty drastically, though I think their opinion of you would fall far more. But I don't think "status" is the best framing of the situation. You having sex with my wife in front of them would cause them to feel incredibly awkward and (I'd hope) sorry for me. You'd associate me with negative emotions, which would make it less desirable for them to socialize with me.
But, again, I don't think any of this is zero-sum. I don't think if I went to a separate group the "low-status" would follow me. I don't think I would be significantly listened to less at work. etc.
That is, to the extent to which I have "status" (outside high school and dating) it seems to very dependent not just on me, but the the judge and also the context. I don't think the uni-dimensional model has much value to offer.
Not great? The affair would reveal you're narcissistic and think little of me.
I would think she loved me less. But, I don't see that as an affront of my "status" writ large - I see it as her (a specific person) loving me less.
Edit: in case it wasn't clear, I'm interpreting the "status" theory similar to the g-factor intelligence theory: as a relatively stable common factor that explains significant variance in various other variables, which implies there should be significant covariance between
I conversely believe the above are (a) not very will correlated and (b) significantly under your control (i.e. you laugh, smile, ask people genuine questions above themselves, are generous, talk to strangers, ask people to go bowling with you, etc ==> people will want to spend more time with you)
I'm going to start from here, because I think if I can explain this right you'll understand how it applies to the earlier part of your post. Status is zero sum within each social hierarchy, social hierarchies form the basis of every relationship and are nested - the social hierarchy of you me and your wife is different to the social hierarchy of you me and your friends, which is different to the social hierarchy at work, but if they have overlapping members the hierarchies can inform the others they are tied to. They might not, depending on how you manage your image however. And, as you say, social hierarchies feel (and as a result are) less important the further you move away from formalised hierarchical structures like work or school or church. But they are still there. Cliques are social hierarchies, inside each clique there are people whose opinions matter more and those who matter less, but removed from formal structures of hierarchy they can be a lot more fluid.
In the situation with your wife, you thinking she loved you less is the loss of status, and that social hierarchy is between you and your wife. It is not unidirectional, it is multi-polar, and it is zero sum - you can't be equally loved and loathed by your wife at the same time, one feeling has to take precedence. Same with your friends - they can't both feel sorry for you and admire you, or despise me and want to introduce me to their wives at the same time. The closest you can get to zero sum in status games is apathy, and we only feel apathy towards people and things that don't matter to us.
Another way to put it is status games are kind of like proprioception. Just because you don't use the academic language of status games and social hierarchies doesn't mean your brain isn't picking up on those things. In fact, I'm pretty sure academics developed those terms because they didn't know how to talk about this stuff without them.
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