ObSociology -Hooking up

Study Finds Men Go for Good Looks
...
Men's choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women's physical attractiveness.
...
"Women made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women's self-rated attractiveness. They didn't greatly overshoot their attractiveness," Todd said, "because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them"

Given the small sample set and nature of the experiment, I am not sure I would give the results a whole lot of weight.

That being said, applying the above finding to my own poor self-image* really explains a lot. Finding folk who I both find interesting** and attractive, but I think would also find me attractive seems close to impossible.

The first statement above also rings true, as twice I have set aside (or not selected in the first place) for more attractive women who exhibited few of the traits I was told made me special. It also would add hardship to committed long distance relationships: if attractiveness is important, no matter how much calling/writing/etc one engages in, it will always come second to local hotties/mills/activities.

As the population of people I find attractive is already very small, and there are so many shiny, beautiful people out there, how could I possibly compete?

Moving beyond my own whining: I wonder how this applies to non-hetero or gender-queer romances. ((In my few forays, I haven't managed to figure out the lesbian dating scene (Dude, late-night foreign language soap operas make more sense and have less drama. Yes, I exaggerate, but only a little), and I am really not qualified to speculate on any of the gay male scenes.))

When looking for partners, how often do you find that what you end up selecting matches what you want on paper?

*This is not fishing for compliments, it just a statement. I am working on the self image thing, it is slow going.

**interesting includes "being an emotional match" rather than just "we can geek out over the same sets of things"

ObSociology -Hooking up

Study Finds Men Go for Good Looks
...
Men's choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women's physical attractiveness.
...
"Women made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women's self-rated attractiveness. They didn't greatly overshoot their attractiveness," Todd said, "because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them"

Given the small sample set and nature of the experiment, I am not sure I would give the results a whole lot of weight.

That being said, applying the above finding to my own poor self-image* really explains a lot. Finding folk who I both find interesting** and attractive, but I think would also find me attractive seems close to impossible.

The first statement above also rings true, as twice I have set aside (or not selected in the first place) for more attractive women who exhibited few of the traits I was told made me special. It also would add hardship to committed long distance relationships: if attractiveness is important, no matter how much calling/writing/etc one engages in, it will always come second to local hotties/mills/activities.

As the population of people I find attractive is already very small, and there are so many shiny, beautiful people out there, how could I possibly compete?

Moving beyond my own whining: I wonder how this applies to non-hetero or gender-queer romances. ((In my few forays, I haven't managed to figure out the lesbian dating scene (Dude, late-night foreign language soap operas make more sense and have less drama. Yes, I exaggerate, but only a little), and I am really not qualified to speculate on any of the gay male scenes.))

When looking for partners, how often do you find that what you end up selecting matches what you want on paper?

*This is not fishing for compliments, it just a statement. I am working on the self image thing, it is slow going.

**interesting includes "being an emotional match" rather than just "we can geek out over the same sets of things"