Does your new partner bear a dangerous resemblance to your ex? No wonder – we tend to choose partners who are ‘like two peas in a pod’
You go your separate ways and promise yourselves that next time it’ll be different. No more people who can’t talk about their feelings. No more workaholics, disorganised types or eternal party animals. Then a few months go by, you introduce your new love to your friends – and they start exchanging meaningful glances. Because although they have a different name, a different hairstyle and perhaps even a completely different job, there’s something about them that strikingly reminds you of your ex. If this has happened to you, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re incorrigible. Research does indeed suggest that many people have a ‘type’ when it comes to romantic relationships.
One of the most interesting pieces of evidence is a study published in the journal *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*. In it, psychologists Yoobin Park and Geoff MacDonald used data from a nine-year longitudinal study to compare the personality profiles of the same people’s ex-partners and current partners. The result? They did indeed find a measurable similarity between exes and new partners.
You might think you’ve found someone completely different. Perhaps they just look different
What’s particularly interesting about the study is that the researchers didn’t rely on how participants described their exes. That could have significantly skewed the results – after all, few people maintain a perfectly objective view following a messy break-up. Instead, the researchers used the partners’ own self-assessments of their personalities.
They looked at classic personality traits such as extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience. And it turned out that the new partner tended to resemble the previous one even after the researchers had taken into account the fact that people generally choose partners who resemble themselves to some extent.
So when people talk about having ‘a certain type’, this needn’t just refer to tall brunettes, tattooed men, blondes or sporty women. The similarity may be much less obvious. It may relate to sociability, temperament, openness to new experiences or the way a person approaches life.
And perhaps even more interestingly, it is not just the type of person that tends to recur. The whole way in which a relationship works can also recur.
Perhaps we don’t choose the same people. Perhaps we create the same relationships
A study published in 2024 in the journal *Collabra: Psychology* focused precisely on relationship dynamics. The researchers analysed two groups – 184 couples who had been dating for less than a year, and 168 married or cohabiting couples monitored during the first two years of parenthood.
This time, the researchers did not look solely at general personality traits. They were also interested in trust, partner support, emotional attachment, sensitivity to a partner’s needs, and conflict resolution styles. And it was precisely in these characteristics that, in many cases, greater similarity between partners was found than in classic personality traits such as extraversion or conscientiousness.
This raises an interesting question. What if we are drawn to a new partner not because they resemble an ex, but because being with them recreates an environment we already know well?
One person may thus repeatedly end up with a partner for whose attention they have to compete. Another always ends up being the one who rescues the other. Some people choose very independent partners, but then suffer from the feeling that they don’t actually need them. And yet another person is constantly drawn to intense and spontaneous people, only to find, after a few months, that they can’t plan anything with them. A new partner may seem completely different at first glance. But the roles you play together may be surprisingly similar.
Do opposites attract? In reality, it’s more complicated
Romantic comedies have taught us to imagine attraction as a clash between two complete opposites. The reality, however, is less Hollywood-esque.
Research published in *Nature Human Behaviour*, which analysed data from more than 51,000 couples in the UK Biobank database, confirms that partners tend to be similar in a whole range of areas – for example, in terms of education, political views, height or lifestyle. At the same time, the researchers point out that these similarities are not solely down to ‘choosing the same type of person’. The environment in which we meet, social conditions, and the fact that partners can influence one another over the course of their life together also play a role. You can read the study here.
It makes sense. We don’t choose a partner from a random sample of eight billion people. We mainly meet people who live in the same cities, social circles, professional environments or use the same dating apps. We often have similar educational backgrounds, values, interests or outlooks on life.
So if several of your past partners have studied humanities, loved techno and refused to get up before midday on a Sunday morning, there may be no deep Freudian mystery behind it. Perhaps you simply move in circles where there are plenty of people like that.
But ‘familiar’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good’
The situation becomes more complicated when, with a new partner, it’s not just the same likeable traits that reappear, but also the problems that caused the previous relationship to fail.
This is precisely where, instead of asking ‘Why are all my exes the same?’, it might be useful to try a slightly more uncomfortable question: What do the people I choose have in common – and what do I have in common in my relationships with them?
There’s a difference between being repeatedly drawn to intelligent, witty or adventurous people, and finding ourselves falling in love time and again with someone who’s emotionally unavailable, only to spend the next few months fighting for the slightest bit of attention.
Similarly, we may repeatedly find ourselves in a relationship where we’re the only one organising everything, defusing conflicts or backing down. In such cases, the common denominator may not be our partners’ personalities, but the role we automatically assume within the relationship.
So are we really always dating a copy of our ex?
Not so fast. The scientific findings aren’t clear-cut enough to claim that every person spends their whole life searching for different versions of one and the same partner.
For example, a 2021 study focusing on people who had gone through a divorce looked at 700 triads consisting of a divorced person, their ex-spouse, and their new partner. The research did not confirm the idea that people simply replace their ex-partner with someone with the same personality profile after a divorce. On the contrary, the results suggested that some people may take their previous experiences into account when choosing their next partner.
Moreover, the original study by Yoobin Park and Geoff MacDonald referred to a statistical trend, not the fate of every individual. Some people have a more distinct partner type, whilst others have a much less distinct one. There is therefore no such thing as a romantic curse.
The fact that a new partner is similar to an ex doesn’t have to be a bad thing at all
Moreover, repetition in itself is not a problem. Previous relationships can also teach us what suits us best. Perhaps you’ve realised that you need a partner who respects your independence. That a similar sense of humour is important to you. That you want someone sociable, or, conversely, someone who’s happy to spend a Saturday evening at home with you.
It would be strange to discard all these preferences just because someone you’ve split up with shared them. After a bad break-up, it might seem logical to decide: ‘Next time, someone completely different.’
But you don’t have to start dating the complete opposite of your ex to build a different relationship. It may be more helpful to distinguish which recurring traits in partners suit you and which ones lead you back down the same dead end.
You might actually find that your exes have a surprising amount in common. What’s even more interesting, though, is discovering what you yourself have in common across all those relationships.
So the next time you introduce a new partner to your friends and one of them utters the slightly suspicious “Hmm, they remind me of someone”, there’s no need to panic. The question isn’t just whether your new partner resembles your last one. What’s far more important is whether you’re repeating the same pattern of relationship with them.
