As if things aren’t hard enough out there in the big wide world for anyone looking for love that doesn’t look like they spend hours at the gym every week, now there’s one more thing to worry about: being too short – or too tall.
Most people prefer to be dating someone where one partner is shorter than the other – most often the woman being shorter than the man. A recent study found that both men and women prefer this arrangement, but it seems like women are much less flexible than their male counterparts when it comes to breaking this rule: only four per cent of females in the survey said they would be open to dating a man who was shorter than them, while nearly one out of every four men said they would make an exception in the same situation.
Relationship experts say that the cultural vision held by women is that they need to be cast in a feminine role most of the time. This leads to having a male partner that is tall enough to protect her, a stereotype that can result in limiting the dating pool for them by quite a bit – especially for taller women.
Around half the men in the survey said they would like to date someone shorter than them, with the rest of the male respondents were split about evenly between wanting a date a woman either their height or shorter. Meanwhile, nearly 9 out of every 10 women were insistent on dating someone taller than them, and only 7 per cent would consider dating someone of similar height.
Women report that dating shorter men tends to make them feel less confident in themselves – something that psychology professors say may be linked to an evolutionary hold-over. Women could be hard-wired to look for men that are taller than them in order to have a mate that can keep them safe from other males, experts say.
