Women Do Better With Men Less Attractive

In the study, psychologist Andrea Meltzer tracked over 450 newlywed couples during the course of four years and posed the question: does a good-looking spouse lead to a more satisfying relationship?What Meltzer and her team discovered was that spousal attractiveness does play a major role in relationship satisfaction — but only for men. In other words, men care about looks more than women do.

The authors write, “The significant effect of wives’ attractiveness on husbands’ satisfaction was significantly stronger than the non-significant effect of husbands’ attractiveness on wives’ satisfaction, indicating that partner physical attractiveness played a larger role in predicting husbands’ marital satisfaction than it did in predicting wives’ marital satisfaction.”

Interestingly, the attractive women also reported higher levels of relationship satisfaction, all because having a happy partner made them happier too.

A study conducted in 2008 at the Relationship Institute at UCLA reached a similar finding. Researchers theorized that men who felt they “lucked out” by being in a relationship with attractive women were happier and more likely to care about their partners’ needs — and in turn, the good-looking women were happier in the relationship as well.

“The men seemed to be basically more committed, more invested in pleasing their women when they felt that they were getting a pretty good deal,” study author Benjamin Karney explained.

Karney said the opposite occurred when the men felt they were better looking than their women, explaining, “They didn’t seem to be quite as motivated to help out their women when they were more attractive than their women.”

What do you think, do you agree with the “hot woman (wife), better life” theory?