Comparing partner could make or break your relationship

New York, May 18: Your happiness in a relationship and how much energy you devote to maintain that relationship depend on how the partner compares with other potential mates you may have, suggests new research. The findings suggest that how well our partner fulfils our ideal preference is not very important. “We do not need ideal partners for relationship bliss. Instead, satisfaction appears to come, in part, from getting the best partner available to us,” said one of the researchers Daniel Conroy-Beam from the University of Texas at Austin in the US. For the study the researchers surveyed 259 adults — 119 men and 140 women — who had been in relationships for an average of seven and a half years. Each participant rated the importance of 27 traits in an ideal mate and the extent to which they felt each trait described both their actual partner and themselves. Participants also reported their relationship satisfaction and happiness. The study discovered that satisfaction was not reliably dependent on how a partner compared with a person’s idea of the perfect mate, but rather whether other potential mates better matched a person’s ideal preferences. Those with partners more desirable than themselves were satisfied whether or not their partners matched their ideal preferences. (IANS)