Health

The Reason Why Your Boyfriend Used to Be Ugly and You Were Happy About It

May 5th 2016

We have some bad news for ugly people. Once upon a time, young people who wanted to find someone to date met in person. While this still happens, many people have transitioned to meeting a bae on their phone with Tinder, Bumble, Soul Swipe, Grindr, or the aptly named Bae app.

This has made some positive or negative changes to the current dating landscape, depending on your perspective and level of attractiveness.

Meeting someone organically in person and developing a friendship with them before dating them leads to "less assortative mating on attractiveness." Basically this means that attractive people are less picky when they can be wooed over time, and less attractive people had a better shot at dating someone better looking than them in person.

Researchers form the University of Texas at Austin and Northwestern University interviewed 167 straight couples, according to The Washington Post. They asked the participants how long they knew each other and if they were friends before dating. A third party rated each member of the couple's attractiveness. The couples who had known each other longer were more likely to have different attractiveness ratings. The biggest differences were for couples who knew each other longer than nine months before dating.

With online dating, people choose to meet based on pictures and an incredibly brief profile. This could cut out the friendship part that works against assortative mating. Although Tinder has been secretive about the actual number of app users, in the past the company claimed that they have made 8 billion connections. 

In 2014, The New York Times gave an estimate of 50 million Tinder users. Either way a lot of people are online dating, and that's bad news for couples with one "ugly" person.

RELATED: Your Odds Of Success On Tinder Are Shocking

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Have you ever dated someone who was less physically attractive than you because of their personality?

No 16%Yes 84%