If you’ve ever been through a bad breakup that made you want to try dating outside your ‘type’, you’re not alone.
The bad news? A new study by social psychologists at the University of Toronto has found that people often look for love with the same type of person over and over again – no matter how hard we try.
Using data from an ongoing multi-year study on couples and families across several age groups, researchers compared the personalities of current and past partners of 332 people and found a very clear pattern.
Participants in the study were asked to assess their own personality traits – including agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness to experience – and it turns out that, overall, current partners of individuals consistently described themselves very similarly to past partners in each category.
So yes, it might be hard to avoid ending up with your ‘type’ in a new relationship, but researchers say this may not be a bad thing – helping us to develop better “strategies” for working with our partner’s personality from past experiences.
“If your new partner’s personality resembles your ex-partner’s personality, transferring the skills you learned might be an effective way to start a new relationship on a good footing”, they said.
We guess every bad breakup has its silver lining!
