Burden of being beautiful

Have you noticed how beautiful people often have the most dreadful relationships? Actors, singers and the like? 

Being famous has something to do with it, but the main reason is that when people are surrounded by beautiful people — like in studios — they tend to feel that their regular partner is somehow less desirable. No matter how attractive they really are.

That even applies to male university teachers! They’re more likely to divorce than the average guy, and if they do, they’re less likely to remarry.

Because they’re always surrounded by young and inviting girls. Making the older women in their lives seem less attractive, compared with all those pretty young things around them...

Photos of female superstars also make an “ordinary” woman feel less satisfied with herself and less desirable as a wife. And reduce a man’s commitment to his partner.

Because all those beautiful images create the illusion of a huge number of utterly irresistible women out there who could be his. And so he ends up feeling dissatisfied.

Our grandparents didn’t have this problem, because they hardly ever watched movies, and there was no social media. They probably only met a few hundred people in their whole lives, and very few of those were stunningly beautiful.

ENDLESS TEMPTATIONS

Actually life’s not as easy as you might imagine for those beautiful people. The endless temptations lead them astray, and also mean they’re less likely to develop the relationship skills they need to keep a partnership happy.

Because, always confident of finding someone new, they tend to jump ship whenever things get rough. While the rest of us, who don’t feel nearly as sure about finding another partner, work harder to keep our spouses content.

Beautiful people also only rarely look beyond attractiveness to what’s really important in a relationship. And so their beauty causes them a lot of trouble, and is actually a burden.

We’re not only drawn to their physical appeal. We’re also socialised to believe that beautiful people are more honest, for example. That’s not true of course, but it means that attractive people are more likely to be acquitted in a criminal trial! They also tend to get higher salaries.

We also tend to believe that beautiful people are more intelligent — but this time that’s at least partly true. Because women prefer intelligent men, as demonstrated by their wit and success in life.

And men prefer beautiful women. So their children — most of the time — are both more beautiful and more intelligent than the average.

Unfortunately, the way the bright and beautiful choose one another as partners has an inevitable downside. Like less physically attractive women find themselves having to marry men who are less educated and less successful.

But if you only go by looks when choosing a spouse, you’ll probably have a hard time. Because success in marriage depends on a whole raft of skills and values, such as honesty and commitment. And those aren’t related in any way to beauty!

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