{"id":709827,"date":"2026-07-25T02:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T02:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/709827\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T02:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T02:03:10","slug":"the-top-reason-people-struggle-to-attract-partners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/709827\/","title":{"rendered":"The Top Reason People Struggle to Attract Partners"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>. 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> and Individual Differences, a recent study<\/a> by Apostolou and Michaelidou explores 17 potential predictors of difficulties in attracting mates. The study is discussed below.<\/p>\n

Investigating why some people have trouble finding a romantic partner<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

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 \u201cother.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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

Predictors of involuntary singlehood in men and women<\/p>\n

The results showed that for women, the factors directly associated with a greater probability of involuntary singlehood were:<\/p>\n

Poor flirting capacity
\nPoor sexual functioning
\nHigh choosiness
\nLow agreeableness<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

For men, the factors directly associated with a greater probability of involuntary singlehood were:<\/p>\n

Poor flirting capacity
\nHigh levels of neuroticism
\nPerceiving oneself as having low mate value
\nLow self-esteem
\nLack of children from previous relationships<\/p>\n

Factors with indirect effects consisted of low conscientiousness, high BMI, poor sexual functioning, and poor self-perceived attractiveness.<\/p>\n

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

Takeaway<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, doubts about one\u2019s value as a mate, and not having children (from previous relationships). For women, the predictors consisted of choosiness, being disagreeable, and poor sexual functioning,<\/p>\n

For both sexes, one of the strongest predictors of not being in a romantic relationship<\/a> was poor flirting ability. The effect was fairly large, such that \u201cone 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

We do not know. The study\u2019s cross-sectional nature means it is impossible to draw causal inferences, so we must await future research.<\/p>\n

Facebook<\/a> image: fizkes\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some folks assume being single hurts and makes you unhappy. This assumption is not necessarily true. Many singles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-709827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}