Does Height Restrict Your Dating Choices?

In the annals of “things that definitely don’t matter when you’re 70”, nothing is more irrelevant to marital happiness than height.

Money matters. If one partner is chronically unemployed or in debt, relations can get strained.

Intelligence matters. If your partner can’t understand what you’re talking about or lacks the maturity to try, he’s a waste of time.

Weight matters. If someone is morbidly obese, he’s probably not making it to age 70.

(By the way, ladies, this does NOT mean he has to be taller, smarter or fitter than you. He just can’t be poor, stupid and fat. Got it?)

Nothing is more irrelevant to marital happiness than height.

But one thing that I’ve never really gotten – after 10 years as a dating coach – was women’s obsession with height. And it’s not a myth. It’s real. An article on Jezebel discusses a report from the Atlantic that illustrates that the average height differential between 4600 married American couples was six inches and that the wife was taller in 3.8% of couples. However, “when the author randomized the information as well to see what would come up by chance, he found something surprising: left to chance, the wives were taller in 7.8 percent of couples– twice as many as before. Meaning, people are choosing to maintain this six inches of difference by going out of their way to pair up according to this distinction.”

This is a rigid and arbitrary preference – most noteworthy, to me, in short and tall women.

With short women, EVERYBODY’s taller. So, if you’re 5’1″, what difference does it make if he’s 5’7″ or 6’1″? Yet some short women discriminate against average sized (5’7-5’11”) men.

On the other hand, with tall women, since only 15% of men are over 6 feet tall, it would stand to reason that a 5’11” woman would be well served to open up to shorter men, instead of insisting that he has to be 6’3′, because that’s how tall she is in heels. There simply aren’t enough 6’3″ men to go around, and if you restrict yourself to them, you’re killing your chances of finding love – for pretty much no reason.

It would be like a male millionaire holding out for a female millionaire who makes more than he does. Is it possible? Yes. Likely? No. Necessary? Definitely not.

The author of the Jezebel piece is 5’11” and had a very healthy and refreshing take on height:

I never felt I was making some kind of concession by dating men shorter than me – I just dated people I was attracted to. But since most men are shorter than I am, had I eliminated them on the basis of shortness, I’d have been sitting out all those dances I never actually went to. In order to find a guy six inches taller, I’d have to find a guy who was 6’5.

She ended up marrying a guy a few inches shorter than her. Good for her.

And if this bugs you and you think you should be holding out for a tall guy, that’s your business. Just keep in mind that your current height criteria cuts your potential mates drastically – and that’s before we talk about age, ethnicity, education, income, personality, religion, emotional intelligence, values, kindness, consistency, attraction to you and desire to be married. He’s gotta have all of those things, plus be in the 15% of men who are six feet tall? Good luck with that.

Please read the article here and share your thoughts below.