Agreed — people choose you because you’re shiny, and to the rest of the world it looks like a family, but watch what happens if you try to give up being shiny.
It's so so different where I live (Poland). It's still super common here to pair up in high school or university where you are basically still a bunch of nobodies and stay together through the fire and flames™ unless literal abuse is involved or the very basics of personality don't match.
Material status or ambition is almost never a factor even among couples of top performers I know. We were kind of raised to expect various big changes in life. Career interest changes, economical downturns, wars. You just... cannot rely on such things at all so it doesn't make sense to care much about that.
