While it's not really news that physical appearance is the basis for a lot of relationships, what does this mean in the long run?
The Journal of Family Psychology suggests that the more physically attractive a wife is in comparison to her husband, the happier they may be as a couple.
Researchers studied 82 newlyweds and found that the couples with wives more facially attractive than their husbands generally ranked their marriage higher on a six-level marriage satisfaction scale. When the husbands had the prettier faces, the opposite was true.
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It did not matter the actual degree of their physical attractiveness — just who was better-looking in comparison to their spouse.
For now, the implications are unclear. The study only covered couples who had been married for less than three months and other factors (like, um, personality) were not considered as causes. The differences could also be attributed to differences in education, income, lifestyle, or just perceptions of happiness on the marriage-satisfaction scale.
If celebrity couplings provide any sort of insight, they do little to support this research: Sandra Bullock and Jesse James? Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren? The females were the more attractive ones in those couplings, and look at how their marriages turned out.
Source: Flickr User greg129