Love is sharing a similar lifespan: How we are unwittingly drawn to those with a similar life expectancy
- Humans select mates sharing similar risks of illnesses linked to lifestyle factors
- This choice helps explain why long-term couples can have similar lifespans
- University of Edinburgh expert found in-laws even shared a similar longevity
We may like to think our choice of life partner is based on nothing more scientific than a shared physical attraction and an ability to laugh at each other’s jokes.
But researchers have found that people are unwittingly drawn to those with a similar life expectancy to them.
It seems humans also unconsciously select mates who share similar risks of illnesses such as high blood pressure or heart disease.
Researchers have found that people are unwittingly drawn to those with a similar life expectancy to them (file picture)
Experts at the University of Edinburgh say the findings help explain why long-term couples often suffer from the same ailments in later years and can have similar life spans.
They examined data from the UK Biobank – a major study of genes and lifestyle factors linked to health that involves more than half a million people.
The team looked at information from the parents of couples and found that even in-laws shared genetic risk factors for diseases and had a similar longevity.
The similarities are greater than would be expected by chance, experts said, suggesting people inadvertently choose a mate who shares the same disease risks as themselves.
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Given that many ailments are not visible when people choose their partners, experts say the surprising finding is most likely a result of choosing a mate with shared lifestyle factors that are genetically linked to disease.
Joint risk behaviours such as smoking, or healthy behaviours like maintaining a healthy weight, are most likely to lead to shared diseases in later life and, ultimately, a similar life expectancy, experts believe.
Professor Albert Tenesa, of the university’s MRC Human Genetics Unit, said: ‘Our study suggests that humans tend to select partners for behavioural or physical traits that are genetically related to disease and longevity.
‘Understanding what traits these are will require new and long-term studies that follow hundreds of thousands of couples from the moment they meet until later in life when they develop disease.
The team looked at information from the parents of couples and found that even in-laws shared genetic risk factors for diseases and had a similar longevity (file picture)
‘It has been known for some time that the longevities of couples is similar and the main hypothesis of why that is was that people shared for many years the same environmental risk factors in the household – lifestyle choices like whether they do exercise or go to the chippy every day – and they then become susceptible to the same diseases and ultimately to the same kind of longevity.
‘That hypothesis supposes they were not similar when they got together, maybe one was sporty and the other wasn’t but little by little, the sportier one stops doing so much or the other one does more exercise and that makes their lifestyles similar and maybe they eat the same meals as each other for 40 years or so and that makes them similar.
‘That is the reason we thought this correlation of similar longevity takes place.’
Researchers also wondered whether when one long-term partner dies, the other’s end is hastened by grief.
‘It was only when we looked at the longevity of the couples’ parents and how similar the longevity was. We found there was a similarity between the longevity between the fathers-in-law and the mothers-in-law. So your father-in-law and your father will also have similar longevities and the same with your mother and mother-in-law.
‘This rules out environmental factors because your father and father-in-law, say, have not lived together in the same household. They haven’t shared the same dinners for 30 or 40 years.’
Prof Tenesa said it seemed as though we picked people with similar likes and dislikes to us, but the chances are our partner’s parents also probably share roughly the same tastes.
‘If you and your partner both like football, then it is likely that your mum or your dad likes football too,’ he said.
Prof Tenesa said there were some obvious things all of us can do to boost our life expectancy, including not smoking, eating well and exercising.
Dr Konrad Rawlik, of the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, said: ‘Studying couples and non-blood relatives is vital to understand why several members of a family can be affected by the same disease. This study demonstrates that both long-term sharing of risk factors and people selecting partners with similar traits contribute to disease burden and ultimately longevity.’
The study has been published in the journal Heredity.
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