People tend to find love in the same type of person always
While breakups hurt and might make people search for love in a different kind of person, a pattern is observed in all your lover choices. People often look for love in the same type of person over and over again, says a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“It’s common that when a relationship ends, people attribute the breakup to their ex-partner’s personality and decide they need to date a different kind of a person. But, there’s a strong tendency to nevertheless continue to date a similar personality,” said lead author Yoobin Park.
Using data from an ongoing multi-year study on couples and families across several age groups, Park and co-author Geoff MacDonald, compared the personalities of current and past partners of 332 people. Participants in the study along with a sample of current and past partners assessed their own personality traits related to agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion and neuroticism.
Researchers’ analysis of the responses showed that overall; the current partners of individuals described themselves in ways that were similar to past partners.
“The degree of consistency from one relationship to the next suggests that people may indeed have a ‘type’,” said MacDonald.
“If your new partner’s personality resembles your expartner’s personality, transferring the skills you learned might be an effective way to start a new relationship on a good footing,” says Park.
“So, if you find you’re having the same issues in the relationship after relationship, you may want to think about how gravitating toward the same personality traits in a partner is contributing to the consistency in your problems,” said Park.