Sure, not everyone wants a dominant partner, but many people do. There is something about dominance that in different ways seems to draw others in.
I recently came across a survey that went over why so many of us tend to be drawn to dominant lovers and the results were quite interesting, to say the least. This survey titled ‘The thrill of loving a dominant partner: Relationships between preference for a dominant mate, sensation seeking, and trait anxiety’ was published back in 2015 and holds a lot of information. While it only had about 172 participants, I found its insides to be quite interesting.
Basically for this survey, 68 men and 104 women completed personality questionnaires and from there went over how much dominance they looked for in a partner. It showed that regardless of gender both men and women who participated preferred dominant partners. That being said it was noted that women higher in trait anxiety and lower in experience seeking had a higher preference for dominant men.
Psychology Today actually wrote about these results on their website and explained things as follows:
Their results did reveal that there were two types of women who preferred dominant partners—those who displayed boredom susceptibility and disinhibition, and anxiety. These traits are totally uncorrelated to each other, providing evidence that these two types of women may have different motivations for seeking dominant partners. Anxious women appear to prefer dominant partners because they offer protection and security, while disinhibited, easily bored women seem to prefer dominant partners because they’re exciting.
Not all anxious women showed a preference for dominant partners, however. Anxious women were more likely to score highly on the experience-seeking aspect of sensation-seeking, the researchers found, and they concluded that anxious women have two different ways of coping with their anxiety: Some seek a dominant man for protection. But others, particularly those who seek out new and exciting experiences, may try to compensate for their anxiety by pursuing a more sophisticated, cosmopolitan and non-conformist lifestyle that involves new experiences, like travel and artistic pursuits. These women avoid a dominant partner who may try to control them and limit their ability to pursue those experiences. (Of course, there may be other explanations for this surprising pattern of results.)
This survey overall seemed to show that people who are easily bored are more likely to go after dominant partners and that some anxious people may seek out dominant partners because they feel more protected with dominant partners. This, however, does not mean everyone who is anxious or easily bored wants a dominant partner but does explain why some people go after the people they go after. I, for one, think that the fact that I get bored easily has to do with why I chose a more dominant partner now that I’ve read through this research.
For more information on this topic please check out the video below. While it might not be set in stone for everyone it is quite fascinating. Do you prefer to have a more dominant partner and if so why do you think that is?