Feel like bird-dogging another guy’s girl? Well, go for it. No skin off our back! Just don’t plan on forming a good relationship with her.
A study published in the Journal of Research in Personality has found that poaching a romantic partner will probably lead to a relationship where you are less committed, less satisfied, and less interested. Oh, and if you’re the one who was poached, you’ll probably keep an eye out for someone better and engage in higher rates of cheating.
Researchers had eighty-four young people, all in romantic relationships, complete a series of questionnaires on their relationships once every three weeks for a nine week period. Twenty per cent of the participants reported that their relationship began with poaching. Participants responded to statements like “I feel satisfied with our relationship” with a one-to-eight scale (do not at all agree to completely agree). They were also asked whether they were keeping an eye out for other potential partners and whether or not they flirted with people other than their partners.
Here’s the takeaway: people who said they’d been poached kept an eye out for someone else, and people who did the poaching weren’t that interested in their relationships.
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Photo courtesy of Thomas Graf.
