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Categories / Human Interest / Portraiture /Tags / couples / human interest / Portraiture / relationships / UK / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / 4 Comments

4 Responses to “Couples Often Look More Similar Over Time”

1. Tweets that mention Couples Often Look More Similar Over Time: -- Topsy.com, on May 1st, 2010 at 7:56 pm Said:

   [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Prison Photography and Mark Kawano, Nik Nur Amirah. Nik Nur Amirah said: Couples Often Look More Similar Over Time: http://www.bitemagazine.net/2010/05/01/couples-often-look-more-similar-over-time/ [...]

2. Natan Dvir, on May 2nd, 2010 at 12:40 am Said:

   Great series. Cheapeu!

3. Couples by Leon Foggit | Garage Studios, on May 4th, 2010 at 10:34 am Said:

   [...] To see the whole article in BITE Magazine click this LINK. [...]

4. Oakland Raiders: OTA, Mini Camps – Schedule – FF 2010 NFL Fantasy … | Oakland Raiders NFL Announcer, on May 6th, 2010 at 2:10 am Said:

   [...] Bite! magazine » Couples Often Look More Similar Over Time [...]

I have always been interested in the science and psychology that often attempts to explain why certain people form a relationship with each other and why certain relationships last longer than others. So when I came across a recent written article on the subject my attention was instantly won. For years experts have been interested in so called physiognomy, the idea that we are given clues as to a persons personality and temperament via the shapes and sizes of their facial features. This is an interesting theory, but what interests me more is the idea that people tend to be attracted to others with similar facial features to their own. There are a few explanations for this, for example we feel more comfortable around familiar faces i.e. for a man (his mothers face) and for a women (her fathers), assuming the person had a good relationship with their mum or dad. It has been suggested that people might be attracted to someone with a similar face to theirs as it would suggest their personality might be similar thus allowing them to get on better and relate to each other more.

So it is possible that we are often attracted to a partner that we may share similarities with, emotionally and physically. But there is another theory; it states that couples often begin to look even more similar over time. This idea has many explanations, however some are more interesting than others, shared diet and environment for instance will affect the way we look but more interestingly, empathy. In a relationship partners will often begin to develop the same emotional ideas and personality traits, then mirror each other’s facial expressions thus over time creating similar muscle patterns and lines on both partners faces. I was fascinated by these different theories and decided to set out to investigate. I selected couples from my local area at random who had been together for various different time spans to see if similarities would be more evident in couples that had been together for longer. Interestingly couples that had been together for longer than twenty years appeared to have a lot more similarities. The majority of the couples in this series have been together for over twenty years. Weather or not they often look similar to each other is still open for debate.