(no subject)

[prismakaos]

In the matter of relationships, which phrase indicates a couple more likely to have a positive outcome?
A) "Opposites attract."
B) "Birds of a feather flock together."
C) "You're convenient."

ETA, 450pm:

I mean positive in the sense of "long-term and lasting", but if other people have different opinions on what positive means to them or in these situations, that's awesome too.

Comments

[zaldreon.livejournal.com]

In order to answer this question, I tried to think of all the couples I know reasonably well, rank order them in terms of the level of similarity of the two members, and then see whether more couples at the "similar" end or "dissimilar" end of the scale appear to have sustained a successful relationship over the long term.

This procedure made option B appear to be the clear favorite. Option C was almost nonexistent among the couples I considered. (Most of these couples were married, and people don't choose a marriage partner out of convenience.) Option A was common but was correlated with the less-successful couples.

These results are, of course, skewed by the sorts of people I tend to know. I'd be hesitant trying to apply these results to other countries, other socio-economic classes, etc.

[troglodyteking.livejournal.com]

"Most of these couples were married, and people don't choose a marriage partner out of convenience."

I strongly object to the second clause here, at least historically. Frankly, I think historically people have married because of convenience, for some definition of 'convenience', statistically almost to the exclusion of attraction or commonality. That being said, I think historically people have had a lot fewer options and usually chosen to marry more for social, economic, political, and sustenance issues. That's changed in the last hundred years or so for more and more people (greater prosperity, less social pressure / greater social acceptance, etc.) so convenience has become a less common reason.