London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Aug 22, 2025

Why we keep dating people like our ex

Why we keep dating people like our ex

Exes share unique similarities to current partners, while our dating history can even be used to determine how attractive we are.

Gossip columns often obsess over who a particular celebrity is dating at the moment. Taylor Swift, among others, has pointed out the inherent sexism in much of this reporting for its focus on, and judgement of, women's ex-partners.

Swift has a point. What’s more, at least if research investigating attraction is to be believed, the number of exes a man has matters a lot. The number of previous partners can make him more or less attractive: none is a warning, but having too many can be a turn off. The optimal number of exes seems to be one or two.

Men are also more attractive if they have experience of being in long-term relationships. If a man has had at least one long-term relationship then, the reasoning goes, there must be something romantically attractive about him. So perhaps Swift is right and there should be more scrutiny of men for their dating histories.

But why do we care about someone's dating history – does it actually reveal anything important? And what is it about having too many exes that makes a man less attractive?

Breaking up with multiple partners can lead to a decrease in people's commitment to future relationships – so perhaps there is good reason to be wary of a man with many exes. One idea is that the emotional stress of a break-up never really leaves us. We carry those negative feelings into our future relationships and might be wary of committing to future partners because we are reminded of past hurt.

But the baggage of a breakup can be mitigated a little if there was a good reason to end the relationship. The worse we implicitly feel about an ex after splitting, the better we adjust emotionally.

Someone's dating history can be a quick, if somewhat crude, way to assess their experience in love without having to spend time getting to know them, says Ryan Anderson, a psychologist at Monash University in Australia. Too few partners and there might be a reason to avoid them that is not immediately obvious. Too many and they might bring with them negatives from their previous partners.

The optimum number of ex-partners for a heterosexual man is one or two


Being able to make a quick assessment of someone's romantic desirability without dating is particularly useful for heterosexual women. Evolutionary psychology suggests women invest more in raising a child and therefore might be choosier than men about who they pick as their partner. One of the desirable characteristics for raising a child would be evidence of commitment, perhaps in the form of a previous long-term relationship.

"Men may well desire a female partner with a high willingness to commit, but my guess would be that men find a potential mate with a high willingness to commit less desirable than women find a potential mate with a high willingness to commit," says Anderson. Though he points out that women who are more interested in short-term relationships might not be particularly attracted to committed men.

It would also appear that younger women are more likely to value the opinion of other women about their prospective dates. Anderson suggests that this is because people with less dating experience look for social cues – such as how other women describe a man – to find a good match.

Judging a potential partner's suitability based on their exes is called "mate copying" – if some women have found a man attractive, others will copy even after controlling for objective measures of attractiveness. This is particularly true for women who have lower levels of relationship trust.

If a man with long-term relationship experience is more attractive, some scholars have suggested that men who are currently in long-term relationships might be more attractive too. It would follow that married men are more appealing than singles.

While a handful of studies have suggested that women find photos of married men more attractive than single ones, in the most realistic studies involving real-life interactions the effect seems to disappear. It might be the case that on paper a man in a long-term relationship is deemed to have better qualities, but in practice this doesn't make a single woman more likely to be attracted to him because he is unobtainable. Social influences, such as the taboo and risks of extramarital affairs, might play a role in muting the attraction.

The number of exes a man has had might make him more or less attractive, but the number might not matter as much for women


For some people, being in a relationship makes them feel better about themselves – this is called relationship-contingent self-esteem (RCSE). But if people higher in RCSE keep in touch with an ex it can undermine their current relationship. They might not break up with their current partner, but it can make them value their current relationship less.

Perhaps one reason that some people might still hold a flame for their ex-partner is that they tend to have similar personalities to their current partner, says Yoobin Park, a postdoctoral scholar at the Network for Emotional Well-being lab in the University of California, San Francisco. (Though extraverted people seem to be less attracted to people like their exes.) Park wondered if this meant that most of us have a fixed "type"?

It seems a bit strange that we prefer partners who are like our exes – after all, there must have been a reason for the break-up. Park looked at the personalities of exes and current partners of 12,000 people over nine years, who were quizzed following break-ups and new romances.

One reason that our exes might be similar to our new partners is simply that we choose our partners from a similar pool – they tend to be colleagues, university friends or people from the same religion, so it is likely they will have a similar level of education, political outlook or personality. But that also means they will be similar to us. As a member of those pools, we should have those traits too.

In Park's study, the dater, their ex and their current partner all scored similarly on a personality test, supporting the idea that we choose people like us possibly because we choose people from a similar pool. However, there was also a significant level of "distinctive partner similarity", meaning that the unique profile of the ex and the current partner's personalities also matched up.

"Instead of simply looking at similarity in each trait one by one, eg, 'is John as high in extraversion as Mike', we looked at 'is John as high in extraversion, moderate in openness, low in neuroticism… as Mike', all at the same time, to capture the overall similarity in the two partners," says Park.

Because people generally have a positive bias about themselves, there's arguably some degree of similarity between any two people, she adds. Distinctive partner similarity gets at the similarity that still exists between John and Mike after accounting for the general similarity and the similarity to us. So, there is also evidence that we have a "type" beyond just "someone like us".

We tend to date people with similar personalities, and only update our preferences if we break up


If we tend to date people who are similar in personality are we doomed to make the same mistakes with new partners? Possibly. Relationships tend to have some degree of similarity, for example the number of disagreements, which is consistent with Park's research in the sense that if you are dating a similar partner, you'd run into similar ups and downs.

The ghosts of exes past can linger on in other ways too. People think that their taste in partners changes over time – perhaps as they mature they look for different qualities. But it might be the case that our taste only changes after a break-up. When couples remain in the same relationship, their descriptions of their "ideal" partner remain consistent. But in a study of married couples who have divorced and remarried, their descriptions of their ideal partner changed – they updated their preferences when they were back on the market.

Park has a suggestion for why break-ups are the catalyst for a change in ideal partner: while in a relationship we are motivated to "feel a sense of conviction" about our choice of partner, and while we are single there is no reason to change our preference. But a breakup is the right time for a reevaluation.

Half of young adults who do break up continue to sleep with their ex afterwards


But just because our tastes have changed, does this mean we actually end up dating different people? Possibly not, says Park. Although we might have a new "ideal" partner, we might not be able to find them and might end up dating someone similar to our ex anyway. This gets at a recurrent theme in relationship research that BBC Future has previously highlighted: we might think we know what we want but in practice we do not always end up dating that ideal person.

Even the idea of "dating" is a little out of fashion for young adults, who instead hook up or hang out, says Jessica Siebenbruner, a professor of emerging adult romantic relationships at Winona State University, US. Half of long-term relationships for young adults also contain a period of being on-again-off-again, and half of young adults who do break up continue to sleep with their ex afterwards, according to Sarah Halpern-Meekin, a sociologist from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the US, and her colleagues. The line between a current, ex and future partner is much blurrier than it ever was. Calculating the number of exes someone has is therefore tricky.

Park has some advice for a dater trying to evaluate a potential match: "Before rushing into another relationship, it's worth reflecting on what kind of partner you were in that relationship," she says. "Relationships are ultimately built and shaped by both partners – if you find that you keep having the same issues across relationships, a part of it might be your gravitating towards the same personality traits in partners that is contributing to the consistency in relationship problems, another might be that you handle the issues the same way."

Our exes can reveal all kinds of things about us without ever saying anything, concludes Anderson. "Someone that has won the affections of several extraordinarily attractive exes, for example, may have all kinds of desirable characteristics – hence their ability to attract highly sought after partners."

Taylor Swift might be right that women are unequally judged for their dating past, but there are good reasons to be fascinated with our exes. Perhaps we should all look at our dating histories more closely.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
After 200,000 Orders in 2 Minutes: Xiaomi Accelerates Marketing in Europe
Ukraine Declares De Facto War on Hungary and Slovakia with Terror Drone Strikes on Their Gas Lifeline
Animated K-pop Musical ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Becomes Netflix’s Most-Watched Original Animated Film
New York Appeals Court Voids Nearly $500 Million Civil Fraud Penalty Against Trump While Upholding Fraud Liability
Elon Musk tweeted, “Europe is dying”
Far-Right Activist Convicted of Incitement Changes Gender and Demands: "Send Me to a Women’s Prison" | The Storm in Germany
Hungary Criticizes Ukraine: "Violating Our Sovereignty"
Will this be the first country to return to negative interest rates?
Child-free hotels spark controversy
North Korea is where this 95-year-old wants to die. South Korea won’t let him go. Is this our ally or a human rights enemy?
Hong Kong Launches Regulatory Regime and Trials for HKD-Backed Stablecoins
China rehearses September 3 Victory Day parade as imagery points to ‘loyal wingman’ FH-97 family presence
Trump Called Viktor Orbán: "Why Are You Using the Veto"
Horror in the Skies: Plane Engine Exploded, Passengers Sent Farewell Messages
MSNBC Rebrands as MS NOW Amid Comcast’s Cable Spin-Off
AI in Policing: Draft One Helps Speed Up Reports but Raises Legal and Ethical Concerns
Shame in Norway: Crown Princess’s Son Accused of Four Rapes
Apple Begins Simultaneous iPhone 17 Production in India and China
A Robot to Give Birth: The Chinese Announcement That Shakes the World
Finnish MP Dies by Suicide in Parliament Building
Outrage in the Tennis World After Jannik Sinner’s Withdrawal Storm
William and Kate Are Moving House – and the New Neighbors Were Evicted
Class Action Lawsuit Against Volkswagen: Steering Wheel Switches Cause Accidents
Taylor Swift on the Way to the Super Bowl? All the Clues Stirring Up Fans
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Apple Expands Social Media Presence in China With RedNote Account Ahead of iPhone 17 Launch
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Cambridge Dictionary Adds 'Skibidi,' 'Delulu,' and 'Tradwife' Amid Surge of Online Slang
Bill Barr Testifies No Evidence Implicated Trump in Epstein Case; DOJ Set to Release Records
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
The CEO Who Replaced 80% of Employees for the AI Revolution: "I Would Do It Again"
Emails Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Character.ai Bets on Future of AI Companionship
China Ramps Up Tax Crackdown on Overseas Investments
Japanese Office Furniture Maker Expands into Bomb Shelter Market
Intel Shares Surge on Possible U.S. Government Investment
Hurricane Erin Threatens U.S. East Coast with Dangerous Surf
EU Blocks Trade Statement Over Digital Rule Dispute
EU Sends Record Aid as Spain Battles Wildfires
JPMorgan Plans New Canary Wharf Tower
Zelenskyy and his allies say they will press Trump on security guarantees
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Escalating Clashes in Serbia as Anti-Government Protests Spread Nationwide
The Drought in Britain and the Strange Request from the Government to Delete Old Emails
Category 5 Hurricane in the Caribbean: 'Catastrophic Storm' with Winds of 255 km/h
"No, Thanks": The Mathematical Genius Who Turned Down 1.5 Billion Dollars from Zuckerberg
The surprising hero, the ugly incident, and the criticism despite victory: "Liverpool’s defense exposed in full"
Digital Humans Move Beyond Sci-Fi: From Virtual DJs to AI Customer Agents
YouTube will start using AI to guess your age. If it’s wrong, you’ll have to prove it
×