Partner Preferences: What characteristics do men and women desire in their partners?
A young man is not yet desirable either in terms of social status or economics, so women prefer older men in terms of their age. In a study of age preferences, 20-year-old women stated that they should be at least 2–3 years (mean value) older than their male counterparts. However, this result does not mean that the criterion of old age of women is infinitely tolerant. As a matter of fact, in this study, women in the 20-year-old group stated that they would agree to marry men who are 7 to 8 years older than them (Buunk, Dijkstra, Kenrick, and Warntjes, 2001).
Although a man has abundant economic resources and a high social status, women are seeking assurances that this man will continue to do so in the future and to share his resources. For this purpose, greed, diligence, and assurance that men will have sufficient resources in the long run; they also consider the existence of items such as reliability, emotional consistency, love and commitment in the selection of long-term partners as assurance that they will be willing to share these resources.
When women pursue a short-term relationship, they tend to look at the choice of spouse from a different perspective; because a short-term match involves only sexual intercourse. Natural selection in the evolutionary process has chosen behaviors that make it possible for a woman to benefit more than harm from such relationships. Given the high risk of a woman becoming pregnant as a result of daily partnerships, it is not difficult to guess what is the only criterion sought in preferred men for this purpose: healthy genes.
Although the physical characteristics of the potential spouse remain important in long-term spouse preferences of women, they are more prominent in short-term spouse preferences. Women are more selective about physical attractiveness in one-night relationships (Gaulin and McBurney, 2001). The size, strength, athletic ability of a man signal the solution to the problem of protection from danger. These properties are also indicative of healthy genes.
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