Verified by The 7 Deadly Dating Sins
Everyone has deal breakers—but they may not always take the lead in dating decisions.
By Devon Frye published May 3, 2022 - last reviewed on July 5, 2022
Many daters have a list of “deal breakers,” traits that would lead them to reject a potential partner outright. New research identified seven traits most likely to be seen as nonstarters—but found that in practice, a mate’s positive traits may still catch another's eye first.
Participants first whittled down a list of 96 unpleasant traits to seven deemed most problematic: hostility, unattractiveness, lack of ambition, filthiness, arrogance, clinginess, and abusiveness. Filthiness was consistently seen as a notable deal breaker, regardless of participants' gender. Women saw unattractiveness as a significant impediment to short-term flings only; men considered it a key roadblock regardless of relationship length. Women felt the same about abusiveness.
Yet participants tended to be more interested in learning about a partner’s positive traits (deal makers) than they were the deal breakers—perhaps because the latter are impossible to altogether avoid. “It’s unlikely that you’ll ever meet someone who scores zero on all these negative factors,” says study author Zsófia Csajbók, a psychologist at Prague's Charles University. Looking for the presence of deal makers, then, may at times be more informative than seeking the total absence of deal breakers, she speculates.
Deal makers and deal breakers are likely best considered in tandem, Csajbók notes. At the same time, taking stock of past relationships and recognizing a tendency to ignore one’s own deal breakers “could help you work out why you always step in the same river.”
