The Main Reason People Can Struggle to Attract Partners

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Some folks assume being single hurts and makes you unhappy. This assumption is not necessarily true. Many singles are, in fact, happy and satisfied with life. But they tend to be people who have chosen this way of life; in other words, they are voluntary singles. Individuals who prefer to have an intimate partner (e.g., cohabiting, married) but remain alone are known as involuntary singles.

An important question is what predicts whether someone will have trouble finding a suitable mate and consequently remain single involuntarily. Published in the January 2024 issue of Personality and Individual Differences, a recent study by Apostolou and Michaelidou explores 17 potential predictors of difficulties in attracting mates. The study is discussed below.

Investigating why some people have trouble finding a romantic partner

The researchers gave a survey consisting of 10 parts to a sample of 1,432 Greek-speaking individuals in the Republic of Cyprus. The sample included 734 women (average age of 35 years old) and 698 men (average age of 39 years old).

Approximately 27 percent of participants were in a relationship, 21 percent were involuntarily single, 21 percent were married, 16 percent were single but between relationships, 9 percent were voluntarily single, and 6 percent were categorized as “other.” Participants who were not in a relationship had been single for an average of four years. Over 16 percent of the sample had children from previous relationships.

The survey examined the association between involuntary singlehood and 17 factors consisting of agreeableness, body mass index (BMI), capacity to perceive signals of romantic interest, choosiness, conscientiousness, extraversion, flirting capacity, mating effort, neuroticism, openness, self-esteem, self-perceived mate value, sexual functioning, shyness, self-perceived attractiveness, sexual orientation, and having children from previous relationships.

Predictors of involuntary singlehood in men and women

The results showed that for women, the factors directly associated with a greater probability of involuntary singlehood were:

• Poor flirting capacity
• Poor sexual functioning
• High choosiness
• Low agreeableness

Some factors had an indirect effect through their negative association with flirting ability. These included shyness, low agreeableness, difficulties with perceiving signs of romantic interest, and poor sexual functioning.

For men, the factors directly associated with a greater probability of involuntary singlehood were:

• Poor flirting capacity
• High levels of neuroticism
• Perceiving oneself as having low mate value
• Low self-esteem
• Lack of children from previous relationships

Factors with indirect effects consisted of low conscientiousness, high BMI, poor sexual functioning, and poor self-perceived attractiveness.

The authors also found that low self-perceived mate value, mating effort, and flirting capacity correlated with years of being single.

Takeaway

Based on the data from a study of over 1,400 Greek-speaking participants, predictors of involuntary singlehood in men included neuroticism, a lack of self-confidence, doubts about one’s value as a mate, and not having children (from previous relationships). For women, the predictors consisted of choosiness, being disagreeable, and poor sexual functioning,

For both sexes, one of the strongest predictors of not being in a romantic relationship was poor flirting ability. The effect was fairly large, such that “one unit increase in flirting capacity was associated with a more than three times increase in the probability to be in an intimate relationship than involuntarily single.”

But why are some people good at flirting and some bad at it? And is being bad at flirting an actual cause of involuntary singlehood?

We do not know. The study’s cross-sectional nature means it is impossible to draw causal inferences, so we must await future research.

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