{"id":13353,"date":"2016-08-20T01:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-08-20T08:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/datemixstaging.wpengine.com\/?p=13353"},"modified":"2021-11-05T07:00:39","modified_gmt":"2021-11-05T14:00:39","slug":"secret-way-date-someone-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zoosk.com\/date-mix\/dating-advice\/secret-way-date-someone-league\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Way to Date Someone Out of Your League"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It\u2019s been pretty much a historic fact that people of the same level of hotness usually date and marry each other (unless there\u2019s some gold digging involved). Take for instance Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Two super hot people who\u2019ve been rubbing in our faces their hotness, their hotness for each other and their hotness for themselves for over a decade together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But now science says that a pairing as genetically unbalanced as Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl in <em>Knocked Up<\/em> can actually, really happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Researchers decided to examine <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/2331510\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/2331510\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">assortative mating<\/a>, the psychological mating pattern in which people couple up with partners who share their physical, behavioral, or psychological characteristics (like the phenomenon behind Brangelina, Joe Manganiello and Sofia Vergara, or Kardashians dating rappers, etc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to their study published in <a href=\"http:\/\/pss.sagepub.com\/content\/26\/7\/1046\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Psychological Science<\/a>, aptly titled, \u201cLeveling the Playing Field,\u201d researchers found it <em>is<\/em> possible to date someone out of your league. So how do you do it?&nbsp;You have to be friends first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Attraction increases with time<br>\n<\/strong>The study focused solely on physical attractiveness, and observed couples who were dating or&nbsp;married, and had been together from anywhere from three&nbsp;months to 53 years. Then they took a deeper look into each person&#8217;s&nbsp;individual&nbsp;physical attractiveness and&nbsp;how well and how long&nbsp;the couple&nbsp;knew each other before pairing up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The study found that people who had started dating within a month of meeting each other were more likely on the same scale of hotness. Reversely, couples that had known each other for longer than a month, including being friends, were most likely to be of <em>The King of Queens<\/em>\u2019 Kevin James and Leah Remini variety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Perceptions of mate value change the more time that people spend together,&#8221; Lead researcher Lucy Hunt&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/06\/30\/science\/for-couples-time-can-upend-the-laws-of-attraction.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told<\/a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;<em>New York Times<\/em>. &#8220;Sometimes you get that Seth Rogen happy story, where an unattractive person comes to seem more attractive to one person in particular. But the opposite is just as likely to happen&nbsp;too. Someone can become less attractive.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyone who has gone out on a date with a hottie only to realize they have the personality of a shoe knows this to be true. On the other hand, the study also proves that attraction can grow over time, which is good news for those who don\u2019t look like Gisele (aka most of us).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Become Friends First<br>\n<\/strong>So how does this attraction develop? According to the study, when a&nbsp;couple gets to know each other first. Whether they meet through a mutual friend, or go to the same yoga studio, when a couple learns exclusive information or characteristics about each other over a period of time\u2014like how someone adorably snorts when they laugh or how passionate they are about cooking\u2014it makes them appear more attractive overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Essentially, the couples studied weren\u2019t choosing each other for style, or a great six-pack; they recognized substance and something unique in their partner, which, in turn, made them hot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or, as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.psychologicalscience.org\/index.php\/news\/releases\/longer-acquaintance-levels-the-romantic-playing-field.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Hunt<\/a>&nbsp;put it, \u201cThere may be more to the old saying than was previously thought. Maybe it\u2019s the case that beauty is partially in the eye of the beholder, especially as time passes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The bad news<br>\n<\/strong>Unfortunately, becoming \u201cfriends first\u201d seems to belong to a more analog way of life. It used to be that couples would meet each other through church groups or school, but now that we\u2019re all basically glued to our phones, online dating has replaced meeting people the old fashioned way. And as online dating users can attest, most connections rely on making an excellent first impression or else they\u2019re discarded for the next match in line. The takeaway? If your next date doesn\u2019t have that immediate \u201cspark,\u201d but there\u2019s something interesting and intriguing about them, you might want to remain open to getting to know each other further. Perhaps giving a second shot to the next nervous first date will end up scoring you the love of your life, or, at least, the next few months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few recent studies show us the way. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":13354,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[884],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dating-advice"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Secret Way to Date Someone Out of Your League<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Wondering how to date someone out of your league? A few studies shed light on why some people choose to date someone that&#039;s a bit lower on the scale.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.zoosk.com\/date-mix\/dating-advice\/secret-way-date-someone-league\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Secret Way to Date Someone Out of Your League\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Wondering how to date someone out of your league? A few studies shed light on why some people choose to date someone that&#039;s a bit lower on the scale.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.zoosk.com\/date-mix\/dating-advice\/secret-way-date-someone-league\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Date Mix\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Zoosk\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/briannehoganwriter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-08-20T08:00:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-11-05T14:00:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/dq1eylutsoz4u.cloudfront.net\/2016\/08\/19133518\/dating-advice-dating-someone-out-of-your-league.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Brianne Hogan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Zoosk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Zoosk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Brianne Hogan\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Secret Way to Date Someone Out of Your League","description":"Wondering how to date someone out of your league? 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