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Comment by tachyonbeam | Hacker News Reader

I think it's also possible that engineering-minded people choose their partners based on more pragmatic reasons, tend to think more about the long term. In opposition to choosing someone primarily based on physical attraction and sexual compatibility, or some mystical belief in love.

IMO, engineers less likely to do things the average couple might do, such as moving in together after a month, planning marriage six months in, and having a baby one year in, they're more likely to be patient and make more careful choices.

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Marrying someone you aren't particularly attracted to or in love with sounds like a recipe for divorce to me.

I used to think that but it turns out that arranged marriages are quite successful: http://www.statisticbrain.com/arranged-marriage-statistics/

Obvious it's not as simple as comparing the divorce rate of love vs arranged marriages, cultural factors play a huge part but from what I've seen in India the fact that they're committed to making it work seems to make for happy couples.

perhaps the type of person that would agree to an arranged marriage is also the type not to object or try and break such a public contract/agreement.

Most people consider love what is better described as lust: a psychological attraction that lasts for about 2 years. If this is all you have to base a relationship on, then after 2 years the feeling wears off and the whole relationship is done.

By contrast, if your relationship is based on just about anything else, whatever those other things are are not as likely to change and so the basis of the relationship doesn't change either.

Parent comment was suggesting less attention given to physical attraction and more to other forms of attraction (personality, intelligence, SES, etc.), not that all forms of attraction were ignored.

I would think it would be just the opposite or least if there were financial incentive ok. You fall in and out of love all the time, or at least I do.

"Particularly" is ill defined here -- as is "attraction." Some aspects of attraction will go away over time (most obviously looks), others vary from time to time. What matters is the ability to love the partner even when you don't like them at a specific moment in time -- because those moments aren't the eternity.

That's what I was wondering. Could someone measure some kind of 'pickiness' measure to determine if bartenders just tend to get married fast where engineers tend to have a long courtship (or some other factor)?

While lack of money making problems worse is certainly an issue I wonder what (if anything) this says about how people choose partners in addition to how things work out.

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