Many people sometimes feel like they’re only attracted to people who are already in a relationship. Scientists may have managed to explain this feeling.
A study carried out in 2022 by the polling company Yougov, commissioned by the site Gleeden (specialized in extramarital encounters) showed that nearly 42% of French people admit to having already been unfaithful in their lives. Almost one in two. Taking this figure into account, it is as many people who have potentially been attracted to a person in a relationship. This attraction is what actor Elliot Page described in an interview published by People in early June 2023. He mentioned his relationship with Kate Mara, already in a relationship at that time. “It was right after I came out, a time of exploration and also heartbreak. I think that relationship, or whatever you call it, sums up a certain dynamic that I constantly found myself in. found, which consisted to fall in love with people who weren’t fully available.”
Elliot Page is far from the only one to have had this feeling at one time or another. If it is often experienced as a shame, or as a form of fatality that would prevent us from being in a relationship, science could well have found the key to these attractions which fall rather badly.
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A scientific trail
This key to understanding is brought to us by a team of British researchers. Their study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, would tend to explain the reason why people in a relationship are so attractive in the eyes of some people. To better understand the mechanism, the researchers first showed faces and hands of men to heterosexual women. The latter had to give their impressions of their physique, and write them down. In a second step, the scientists showed them the photos again, but annotated with the opinion of the other participants. The women then had to note the faces and hands of each man again.
The result was unanimous. Between the first and the second stage, individual choices were impacted by knowledge of other participants’ opinions. The men who had pleased the greatest number of women in the first round, were much better rated in the second overall. And vice versa for less appreciated men. The conclusion of the study is without appeal, whether we like it or not, our choices and attractions are dependent on a form of social influence. In the case of people in couple in our daily life, it is the same mechanics. If a person is attractive enough to be in a relationship, or if they are particularly coveted, they will please us by mirror effect.
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Challenge or confirmation bias
For Alexandra Vatimbella, sexologist and couple therapist interviewed for Yahoo Lifethis form of“will have” released by people in couples and highlighted by the 2018 British study, can turn into “challenge”. “People who are already taken have confidence and self-confidence, are not ‘seeking to seduce’ or insecure about seduction, because there is not much at stake for them, which makes them attractive because they are more inaccessible. They therefore represent a more interesting challenge in seduction.
But this is not inevitable, and in many cases, this feeling of always being in love with people in a relationship could be more like confirmation bias. This is explained by Alexandra Vatimbella. “It is a cognitive confirmation bias, people are probably attracted to single people too but they pay less attention to it.” According to her, many people who think they are only attracted to people in a relationship remember only the bad experiences, where they fell under the spell of suitors already taken. Do not panic so if this is your case, you still have every chance of falling for a beautiful or a beautiful bachelor!
Society/Sex/Psycho Journalist
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