Trophy wife

A trophy wife refers to a marriage pattern in Western society in which some men marry attractive women as a form of display intended to exhibit their wealth and success to others.

Often rich and successful men who follow this pattern divorce their first wives, often with a generous divorce settlement, and then marry a second much younger woman. In many cases this pattern is repeated with subsequent wives. This marriage pattern is of interest to anthropologists because is can be seen as a form of serial monogamy and is analogous to patterns of polygamy in other societies.

Examples in fiction

• A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe