Whether it’s bad manners or simply bad teeth, when it comes to new relationships, we all have something that might make us think twice about somebody.
Now psychologists in Australia have identified the most common ‘deal-breakers’ that would send most of us running for the hills.
Using data from more than 5,500 single people aged 21 to 76 they discovered the biggest turn-offs for men and women who were considering a long-term, committed relationship.
For women, the most commonly cited relationship no-no was laziness, followed by a dishevelled or unclean appearance, and being too needy.
Lacking a sense of humour and bad sex came in at fourth and fifth respectively, the study led by Western Sydney University found.
The results were similar for men, except dishevelled appearance took the top spot, shoving laziness into second place, while the fifth most commonly-cited deal-breaker for the chaps was living more than three hours away, rather than bad sex.
The participants reported an average of just under six (5.76) deal breakers, with women listing more (6.1) than men (5.4).
The researchers said it is likely that women have evolved to be more picky because the stakes are higher for them, in that they are the ones who get pregnant, so they must choose a suitable mate who will help them successfully raise their child.
‘Women are likely to be more selective about their relationship partners to avoid costly impregnation by low-quality mates,’ they wrote in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
The researchers also found that men were more likely to cite having children and a low sex drive as deal breakers than the women were.
This may reflect men’s ‘greater concerns about resource investment in partners - and their families - and men’s somewhat higher interest in casual sex’, said the academics.
It seems that the men were less concerned with the quality of sex than the women, just as long as they were getting enough of it.
Men were also more likely to be turned off by someone who ‘talked too much’ the study found.
Women, meanwhile, were more likely to report a lack of self-confidence and engaging too often in TV/playing video games as deal breakers, which is ‘consistent with prior work showing that women desire mates who are dominant, ambitious and status-driven’, the researchers added.
(dailymail.co.uk)
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