Picking Partners, Part II

Here is more information about picking partners:

Multiple studies show that women prefer tall men. Most conclusions in these studies talk about height being connected to resource potential.

According to David Buss, University of Michigan, author of "The Evolution of Desire", he asked 10,00 people in 37 different cultures what they considered most important in choosing a mate. He found that that everyone is looking for a partner who offers the best shot at successfully producing offspring. Age of a woman and resources of a man, that he is willing to share with her and the offspring, play a large role in mate selection.

Quoted in the book "Blink" (2005)The average American male is 5' 9", 14.5 percent of all men are 6 feet or taller and 3.9 percent of adult men are 6'2" or taller.

Quoted from WIRED in the July 2008 Readers Digest, "In the world of online dating , a five-foot-eight-inch man has to make $146,000 more a year than a six-foot-tall man to get the same number of dates."

"Marrying Up" and "Marrying Down"
Historically, if you "married up," you married someone taller, older, richer, or better educated than yourself. Most women married up, by choice. Fittingly, most men preferred shorter, younger, poorer, or lesser-educated partners, so "married down." People generally now reject such class distinctions, They say they want to "marry sideways," or words to that effect. Current studies indicate the the "marry up" and "marry down" patterns still exist. It also shows that women, not men, do most of the matrimonial choosing.

According to John Money: John Hopkins University, by the time we are eight years old, our "lovemap" has already started, "the pattern for our ideal mate has already begun to float around in our brains"

In picking cars the saying goes, "women buy chassis and the men buy engines". When it come to women and men picking mates, women buy engines and the men buy chassis.

The more education a woman gets diminishes her chances of marriage. Studies show a highly educated woman , if typical, doesn't want to marry a not so educated man, if she can help it. So when looking over potential mates, she finds fewer eligible men to choose from.

"A man falls in love with his eyes, a woman through her ears". British journalist Woodrow Wyatt said it . His aged belief, not uncommon, holds that a man is attracted to a woman by what he sees in her appearance. but a woman is attracted to a man by what she hears - from him and others - about his personality and status.

My (Otto's) summary of "Getting the Love you Want" by Harville Hendrix, PhD. We are attracted to those that are similar to the parent we have the most difficulty with.

Similar to the above, a counselor friend told me, "95% of the time you will marry a person that is like your problem parent."

Sincerity: look for this in a mate; if the person doesn't have sincerity none of the rest means much.