Should you marry spouses who (i) complement you? or (ii) very similar to you?

Should you marry spouses who: (i) complement you?

or

(ii) very similar to you?

Keep in mind that you also produce children with your Spouse, they're not just a person who spend every day life with.

In old times in many societies, spouses would have the same profession. If the husband owned a store, the wife would move in and run the store with him for example. They would see each other quite often and probably their children too in the off times. Same for farmers and toolmakers. So the trick is to find someone who you could spend many days together and who doesn't drive you crazy. I think you shouldn't really try to focus on other things except willingness to have children and beauty (but that won't matter as much after children). You will have shared interests if you live and work together so that means you become complimentary. In the modern world, that means if she reads a book while occasionally watching as you play the map game, or watches some weird anime together with you, that means it's probably fine, especially if you meet at work.

Short answer: marry similar (otherwise your children are not able to inherit your economic and reproductive niche)

Long answer: Frist, we must ask ourselves, what do we optimize for? I optimize for the number of quality adjusted descendants which I would practically measure by the number of quality adjusted grandchildren.

One risk is to have plenty of children, but hardly any grandchildren, because your grandchildren are incapable of occupying your economic niche.

Example 1: A digital nomad (125 IQ, low agreeableness, high conscientiousness, introverted, high openness, medium looks) lives in Southeast Asia and marries a collage educated woman (100 IQ, high agreeable, medium conscientiousness, somewhat extroverted, low openness, good looking). He may enjoy is marriage, he may have several kids, however the trades which made the digital nomad successful will be watered down in the next generation somewhat. His kids will be less smart, less open, less conscientiousness and can’t work as well alone. Can they occupy the same niche?

Example 2: The mainstream NPC (gets cheated on by his wife and divorce raped) gets outperformed by a Machiavellian (high in cunning, low in agreeableness) as well as a Christian (low in cunning, high in agreeableness). However a Machiavellian man marrying a Christian wife will produce children, which won’t fit in either dad’s or mum’s niche.

Human jobs are 3-fold (i) control things (e.g. farm food, build machines), (ii) control people (politician, marketing, journalist) or (iii) control violence (e.g. soldier) requiring different trades to be successful. Outbreeding may give you offspring not adapted well to any of the 3 niches.

It feels like you ended your post abruptly