Why Physical Attraction Matters in Romantic Relationships, According to Science (2024)

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about your dream partner? Chances are that you talk about their sense of humor, kindness, understanding, and maybe lastly, looks.

But, for some reason, we tend to describe our dream partner in terms of personality traits rather than appearances. My guess is, this is due to our fear of coming across as superficial. I am just as guilty of this since I have always thought that I explicitly chose to focus on meaningful connections with people instead of falling for looks.

Just imagine you meet the sweetest, romantic, intelligent, and wittiest person on the planet, perfect in almost every aspect except a lack of physical attraction. What would you do?

I admit that I did break it off with a nice guy because I wasn’t attracted to him. For some reason, I couldn’t get over the fact that I didn’t find him attractive enough — and in all honesty, I felt bad to break it off with him. However, this experience aligns with what researchers found regarding how important attractiveness in romantic relationships really is.

For a romantic relationship to flourish, according to experts, physical attractiveness is a must. However, Robert Kurzban and Jason Weeden were able to show that when it comes to dating, observable attributes such as attractiveness, height, and age were more important and not substantially related to harder-to-observe attributes such as religion, education, or the desire to have children in the future.

According to science, there is no difference in how we value attractiveness between online dating and real-life dating. In other words, whether you meet someone online, in a bar, or at a speed dating event, physical attractiveness always plays a key role whether we want to enter into a relationship or not.

But why does physical attractiveness take precedence when individuals make real-life dating and mating decisions? Why is it that the most desired…