Love and Marriage Article

Why Beautiful Women Do NOT Marry
Less Attractive Men

by Dr. Charles D. Schmitz and Dr. Elizabeth A. Schmitz

We think the whole "visual thing” when it comes to love and relationships is dramatically overrated.  Our 25+ years of research on successful love and relationships would call into question the study that came out recently entitled “Why Beautiful Women Marry Less Attractive Men.”  To put it bluntly, the authors of this study are just plain wrong!   Their conclusions are flawed.  Here’s why.

Women do NOT marry less attractive men!  They marry men they have fallen in love with.  We tend to marry people we judge to be most like us -- social-economically like us, people we think are in our "beauty class," people who agree with us on most issues, people who share our core values, etc.  Our perception of the way another person looks does affect whether or not we are attracted to them in the beginning, but then a whole new set of dynamics take over.  Once attracted, for whatever reason, love takes over.  That's why you see couples that look like Mutt and Jeff – couples who are fat and skinny, tall and short, and so forth.  Love, pardon the pun, does from time to time make for strange bedfellows!

Interestingly enough, people who have had a long and successful loving relationship have reported to us that they think the one they love is beautiful no matter what other’s assessment of their relative looks might be.  Successfully married couples, for example, report to us that they simply love their partner and in the list of things that matter in their relationship, the physical part, beyond being healthy, matters very little.  Love is love no matter its shape or size or its relative beauty.  Your love is your love no matter what others may think about it or how they might assess it.  Being in love with another person do not require approval or acceptance by others.  Love is personal and the reasons for it are often known only to the people in love.  But in the end, that is probably all that matters.

Beauty is relative and resides in the eyes of the beholder.  When you fall in love, you will do so based on your own perceptions of the other person and the value you place on what you see.  Others are not capable of telling you what matters to you in that relationship.  In the end, the goodness of your partner, their honesty and trustworthiness, and the core values you share, will win out.  Love trumps everything.  All things are beautiful in true and lasting love.

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