Do you and your partner have a similar height? Well, researchers say you might not have the best of relationships.
Researchers from Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea, analysed data from 7,850 women, which was collected from a long-term population survey. The researchers found that women with much taller husbands were happier in their marriage, though this effect tends to wane as the years go on.
‘Although it has been known that women prefer tall men in mating for evolutionary reasons, no study has investigated whether a taller husband makes his wife happier,’ according to researcher Kitae Sohn.
‘A greater height difference in a couple was positively related to the wife’s happiness,’ Kitae revealed, explaining that there could be many reasons why a taller man makes a woman happier.
‘One is the intrinsic value of height; that is, women simply like tall men, while unable to say why,’ he wrote in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
‘This is similar to people favouring fatty, salty, and sugary foods without knowing exactly why: such foods are essential to survival but were scarce as humans evolved – hence craving such foods increased reproductive fitness in the past,’ he adds.
He revealed that while women could prefer taller men, the effect could fade out after a period of 18 years.
‘Women evolved to prefer tall men because they were perceived to be stronger, and naturally they are happy when they have what they like’, Kitae says.
‘But as for other desired objects, pleasure from having them dissipates. What was surprising is that the complete dissipation took 18 years.’
Still, for the first two decades of the relationship at least ‘male height has a powerful impact,’ he concludes.
Do you and your partner have big differences in height, and how happy could you term your relationship?
Phil