A marriage of convenience?

Sometimes I think about the benefit of being in a relationship v not being in one and in addition to all the nice fluffy emotional stuff there is of course a large element of convenience. Philosopher Nozik acknowldges there are also certain ‘functional’ benefits of forming a union such as ‘Accepting certain kinds of divisions of labour’! And it’s true, you can share the cooking, cleaning, household tasks etc and in today’s society we all know it’s much easier to get on the property ladder as a we rather than a me. Of course, this element of convenience only exists if both parties are contributing to the ‘divisions of labour’ equally.

Traditonally, a man would go to work and a women would stay home and care for family and home. In fact, people used to live with their parents with the mother likely talking care of household tasks until they married themselves and a strong driver of marriage for men was to set up home marrying a women to do the household chores while he was at work leaving him the chance to relax upon return after a day’s hard work. How different things are now! We set ourselves up as individuals with full time jobs in the office and full time jobs taking care of our homes! No wonder forming a couple and dividing the labour makes sense in today’s society where both partners are often working! Of course if you don’t fancy taking a husband or wife – there’s always the cleaner!

You got the look!

People often talk about love at first sight but what are the physical characteristics that make someone attractive?

Well for a start familiarity is one thing. Have you ever noticed that some couples look quite similar? Well, studies have shown that we tend to go for partners that look quite like ourselves! Research at the University of St Andrews in Scotland used computers to morph individuals faces into the their opposite sex self! When they were shown a selection of pictures of the opposite sex (with their own in the pile) they were likely to select the picture that looked most like themselves! That’s self love!

Failing finding the mirror image of youself, how about your mum or dad? Perrett, who led the study suggests the reason for us liking a face similar to ours so much is because they remind us of the faces we constantly looked at in our childhood years J

Not only are we looking to replicate ourselves, we’re also looking for perfection... Other studies have suggested that faces that are symetrical are more attactractive than those that are not. This could be linked back to symmetry being a sign of strong genes. Interestingly symmetry is more important to men than to women who may be looking for good genes in rank or status rather than purely looks alone.

So, a symmetrical mirror image of yourself could be just what you are looking for!