Starting as far back as Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet, how many times has a heroine declaimed she could never fall in love with a man (ssh—it’s the hero!) because he’s arrogant, or pig-headed, or happens to despise flowers, and she’s a botanist—only to be enfolded in his arms whispering “I love you” at the end?
Turns out, a report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds, that what people believe they want in an ideal mate is flexible when it comes to meeting real potential partners. In fact,the new study says, that “even though people had ideas of what traits and characteristics they wanted in a mate, they weren’t necessarily attracted to people with those traits and characteristics.”
So our heroine is not wrong in her declamation; she’s just...flexible.
What trait does your partner have that you never thought you’d find attractive—but you do now?
