Not so close! Clinginess is a passion-killer

DO YOU want to spend every waking hour with your partner, giving them constant love and attention?

If so, you might want to back off – as clinginess has been named the biggest relationship turn-off in a scientific study.

Researchers questioned more than 1,400 people and found a dizzying array of 78 difficulties in keeping a relationship alive.

The most common cause of strain, according to 30 per cent of those quizzed, was having a loved one who is too needy or overly dependent on them – a factor that rated higher than bad sex, work pressures or even your partner sleeping around.

Women were more likely to cite clinginess as a problem than men, who were more prone to raising issues about sex.

The survey was carried out among couples from their late 20s to late 30s in Greece and China, a third of whom were married.

A third of all couples reported no problems, while more than one in five cited four or more areas of difficulty. Menelaos Apostolou and Yan Wang, who published their research in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, said: ‘The plethora of factors we have identified testify to the complexity of the phenomenon [of dealing with relationship strains].’