Agreed. For an attractive person, while the pool of willing mates may be larger, the quality may not be there. Potential quality mates may have already written them off as being in a different league. (Speaking from my own limited experience).
The better you look, the more you’ll see.
Does it?
Having a larger pool helps if you are limited by finding enough people to consider a relationship with. I’m sure there’s a level of physical attractiveness where that’s a major stumbling block.
But beyond that, having a larger dating pool only helps if the average quality goes up. If the average quality goes down, having a larger pool is a hindrance.
It’s not at all clear to me how being more attractive relates to the quality of one’s dating pool. I can imagine stories either way. For example, the really best possible partners have great qualities in many areas and are attractive, so being more attractive opens you up to finding a best-possible partner. On the other hand, people who care only about the attractiveness of their partners are likely pretty bad romantic partners, so being less attractive spares you all those duds.
Easy. Assume you are attractive and 60% of eligible people want to date you. If you aren’t attractive, 10% of people want to date you.
If you are looking for a quality partner, the odds that those people will reciprocate your affections are far higher.
Thinner defined how? Total weight, BMI…?
I know a lot of couples where his total weight is and has always been higher but her BMI is and has always been higher.
Being more attractive doesn’t necessarily mean that they are a knockout 10+. Anyone can do things to make themselves more or less attractive. So in that consideration, the more attractive you make yourself, the better it is for your relationship.
The less attractive you make yourself, the less likely your partner will be attracted to you and want to be physical with you. It’s much easier to want to have sex with someone who is in good shape, dresses well, is well groomed, smells nice, etc. I’m sure we all wish it wasn’t like that, but that’s the truth.
Whenever threads or Internet posts coming up saying that being attractive has disadvantages, I would bet big money that if you were to ask everyone, “Knowing all the pros and cons of being attractive, would you prefer to be attractive or not?”, that the answer would still overwhelmingly be yes in favor of attractiveness.
I’m still not following. Size is not the same as quality.
Still not following. If the average quality of pool goes down while its size goes up (I’m not saying it does do that. I don’t know), doesn’t that make finding a quality partner harder?
The larger the pool that wants to date you, the better your odds of finding a high-quality mate in that pool.
Also, the more attractive you are, the more likely you are to attract high-quality mates who fancy that they are in your league. If you are unattractive, many high-quality mates wouldn’t bother pursuing you at all (or would turn you down if you tried to pursue them.)
Yup. Just as the more employers that want to hire you, the better your odds of finding a job you like that pays well (assuming that is what you really want).
The balance between looks and other qualities is important too.
A really attractive person (a “10”) who isn’t very intelligent, doesn’t have good habits, or isn’t well-adjusted probably won’t do as well as a person who’s a 7 with equally high scores in those areas.
The 10/1 may attract more people than the 7/7, but there’s likely to be more deception and conflict to deal with (and less ability to deal with it).
There are also differences between males and females in how these ratios influence prospects: a man’s looks are less important, except maybe height.
Maybe this is best expressed as, “When the woman is more *fit *than the man”.
I saw a survey once that claimed that partners’ participation in a fitness regimen played a role in long-term stability: the least stable was when the man worked out but the woman did not. (I can’t recall how the other situations (neither partner works out; both partners work out; woman works out but man doesn’t) fared).
That would dovetail with the aforementioned TED talk. It might be an symptom of the greater value placed on (one aspect of) a woman’s looks (fitness) than on a man’s.
It might not qualify as “healthy” but I think most people will put up with more from an attractive partner. So, probably easier to be somewhat passive (or a jerk) in a relationship and not get dumped if that’s a goal. Plus, sex is very important in a healthy romantic relationship. While it may not be the most important thing, being very aroused by a partner helps with satisfaction.
I have often read that the closer partners match, in terms of total value, the better chance of staying together. For each gender, different qualities have more weight – men put a lot more value on physical attractiveness than women typically do – but things like sanity, solvency, intelligence, sense of humor, empathy, etc. also are part of the value pie. People tend to have a fairly good sense of where they land on the overall desirability scale.
My own opinion and my personal observations are that unusual physical attractiveness, in either sex, gives people a strong excuse to be assholes to the opposite sex. In women, it also can make you a target for ruthless powerful men. Sure, a bigger field, but not sure that is so helpful, ultimately, unless all you want is to hook up. So the “meaningful” part of the OP’s question is questionable.
A mutual friend of the well-known beat poet Diane Di Prima told me that Diane told her that she knew as a young woman that she could be a beauty if she wanted to be, but she saw where that led and decided she’d rather be someone else.
From what I’ve read, the difference is that men are often attracted to a woman almost immediately (if they find her attractive,) whereas with women, oftentimes they aren’t into a man, but then when they like him or get to know him better over the course of a few weeks or months, they start seeing him with the female equivalent of beer goggles; they start perceiving him as good-looking, etc. even if he isn’t particularly good-looking.
So it’s like the order of A and B are reversed for men and women.
BMI. I can’t find the video, but that’s what Google is returning when I search for it.
(The video also stated that relationships are the happiest where the two people don’t communicate and instead just knuckle under and accept the situation. E.g., one of them hates bowling and the other loves it, and the one who loves it is blissfully unaware that the other one hates it. Whee.)