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How do we choose a partner? The specific choice of a particular person is unpredictable, but there are evolutionary factors that influence this process, psychologists say.
Psychologist Todd Shackelford, head of the laboratory of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oakland (USA), and his colleagues analyzed the questionnaires of more than 10 women and men from 37 countries. And here’s what they found.
When we choose a partner, we often face an internal conflict — to surrender to the will of romantic feelings or to connect our fate with a person who can bring comfort and security into our lives? If our feelings are really strong (and sincere), most of us tend to trust our hearts.
2. Emotional stability and external attractiveness
Opinions were divided. On the one hand, if a person attracts us physically, we are ready to put up with the fact that he has mood swings (even if sometimes this is painfully reflected in people close to him). At the same time, many of us are willing to accept a less attractive partner if he shows himself to be emotionally stable and psychologically well.
3. Intelligence and family
For a person with a high level of education and career success, we can forgive the desire to take your time with family and children. However, if the candidate for our heart turns out to be less educated and successful, but wants a family and children, we will also consider him as a potential applicant.
4. Ease of communication and common views
If a person shares our views and interests, his chances are greatly increased, even if he is not very sociable. On the other hand, someone who can communicate easily and naturally attracts us even if he has never before been interested in what matters to us.
These four factors equally illustrate the behavior of both men and women. At the same time, it turned out that women in most cases prefer the social status of the chosen one to romantic feelings. For them, the emotional and psychological stability of a man is more important than physical attractiveness. They also tend to a more intellectually developed partner, forgiving him the desire to have no more than one child.
At the same time, for men, social status, the ability to control one’s emotions, and a sharp mind turned out to be less demanded female qualities. For them, physical attractiveness, youth (as a guarantee of good health and the possibility of procreation) and the desire of a woman to have children are still important.
The study also showed that women are an order of magnitude more selective in choosing a partner. One of the reasons for this is probably that if they make the wrong choice, they lose more. Men are naturally more dominant, and women can potentially pay the price for a mistake, both physically and emotionally.
In addition, women feel a great responsibility for future offspring. “Despite the fact that we have sufficient data on how exactly we choose life partners, we still cannot answer the question of what determines our final choice,” concludes Todd Shackelford. “And it doesn’t always obey biological and evolutionary laws, or even our own conscious desires.”
We are looking for a person with certain traits in order to fall in love with his complete opposite. As the philosopher Pascal Blaise noted: “Our heart lives according to laws incomprehensible to the mind. And in this secret of the heart, probably, lies our happiness.