If Your Wife is the "Looker" you May Have a Happier Marriage

Most of my girlfriends are cuter than their husbands. We don’t talk about it. We accept it. Sometimes the guys look pretty good, but they never look as good as we do. We like it and we feel adored. What about those wives who marry guys who are better looking than they are? These are the ones we all talk about. “How did she get him?” or “Wow…she got herself a real looker”. We take it for granted when it’s the other way around, so it impresses us when we see a not so cute woman with a gorgeous man. Research from the Journal of Family Psychology reveals that how attractive a person is compared to their partner is very important immediately and after years of marriage. It is also the reason women choose not to date or marry men who are better looking than they are.

James McNulty, from the University of Tennessee, has a theory that couples with a better-looking husband experience less happiness in their marriage in comparison to the marriages with a better-looking or equally attractive wife. Satoshi Kanazawa PhD, an evolutionary psychologist, believes that men can maximize their reproductive success by pursuing one of two different strategies. Men can seek a long-term mate, stay with her, and invest in their joint offspring (the "dad" strategy) or they can seek a large number of short-term mates without investing in any of the resulting offspring (the "cad" strategy). Supposedly,the better-looking a man is the more difficult time he has being “the dad” vs. “the cad”. One issue that this theory does not account for is the incredible attractiveness of a man who has power, money, and/or intelligence (my personal aphrodisiac). Women for the most part judge men to be good looking with different measures than men do.

James McNulty went further with theory and came up with this: men who were less physically attractive than their wives were more "supportive" of their partners than their hotter counterparts. The less attractive men also invest more in their exclusive relationships, not to mention less chance of infidelity. A man with a more attractive partner feels like he has something good on a high level so he works hard to maintain that relationship.

If you are married to a man who is not as good looking as you, it may be wise to let him be. Sometimes women marry someone and then begin trying to change them to fit into their higher standard. I have seen men who were recentlymarried begin wearing contacts, braces, and sporting a haircut that doesn’t suit their personality. Maybe that guy you married is happy he got such a beautiful bride and will work hard to keep the marriage and the relationship solid. When the kids come along, he may be a great dad too. Leave him alone, let him be himself. In most relationships there is only room for one “pretty one”. If that is the woman you may be luckier than you thought.