Sometimes it feels like we’re all trying to uncover some perfect secret formula that we think will help us find love.
We believe there’s something wrong with us. We tell ourselves if we just lost this much weight, if we just liked this kind of music or if we just stopped behaving in this way, we’d find “The One.”
We pick ourselves apart, treating all of our unconventional qualities like flaws that need to be changed. It’s as if the formula lies within us, and we just have to hate ourselves a little bit in order to uncover it.
But we’ve been doing it wrong all along. There’s no magic secret formula to finding our soulmate.
In fact, if there’s any secret formula at all, it actually involves embracing those unconventional qualities we keep trying to hide.
Scientific American reports a recent uplifting study from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin that shows that both men and women prefer to date nonconformist people — people whose clothes, opinions and life decisions don’t follow the “norm.”
