Flirting With Danger: When Others Hit on Your Partner

If someone hit on your partner, how would you feel? (Hint: It's not as flattering as you may think.)

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Everyone wants to be in a relationship with an attractive partner.

But, is your partner attractive? Obviously, you think so, but do others find them appealing?

How a person answers those questions can give them an idea of their partner’s mate value. If it seems that no one else finds your partner appealing, that can lead to negative feelings. However, if lots of other people find your partner attractive, that can potentially make you quite proud that they’re with you.

Part of the allure of having a hot partner is that others take notice. You benefit from more positive perceptions when others notice your partner’s superior attractiveness. Researchers call this the “radiating beauty” effect, which suggests that a guy with an attractive girlfriend appears more attractive (Signal & Landy, 1973; Rodehefer et al., 2016). Similarly, men appear more attractive when they are in a relationship in general (Eva & Wood, 2006).

Life doesn’t unfold like a psychology experiment where we can neatly ask others to give their objective ratings of our partner and then rate us. (It’s weird to ask people, “How attractive do you think my husband/wife/partner is?” and “How attractive does that make me?”) But in real life, the world does cast a vote. One way to figure out what the world thinks is through the unsolicited flirtatious advances your partner receives. For example, do others try to flirt with your partner when you’re at the grocery store, mall, coffee shop, or walking down the street? If they do, how does that make you feel?

The answer might surprise you.

The Study

A team of researchers led by Gurit Birnbaum put this to the test in three different experiments (Birnbaum et al., 2024). In each, participants were placed in situations where another person flirted with their romantic partner.

In the first study, researchers instructed 244 Israeli participants to “visualize a situation where, in their presence, someone else either expressed interest in their partner without any reciprocation from their partner or behaved neutrally.” When participants thought their partner received interest, they had less sexual interest in their partner and greater distancing.

In Study 2, researchers placed 132 participants in a virtual environment in which a stranger showed interest in their romantic partner. The researchers described the virtual reality setting this way:

“[The] environment accurately replicated a lively bar setting. It featured a bartender, an array of other virtual individuals, soft background music, and the sounds of people engaged in conversations, contributing to the overall immersive effect. In the unsolicited attention condition, one of the virtual individuals initiated a conversation with the participant’s partner, whereas in the control condition, it was the bartender who interacted with the participant’s partner.”

As in Study 1, participants indicated lower sexual desire toward their partner who had been hit on by a stranger. Notably, these participants also expressed a greater desire to belittle or put down their competition and to threaten them.

You may assume that finding out that others are flirting with your partner is flattering and makes them seem more attractive. However, the data disagrees and so the researchers found the opposite: Learning that a partner had been flirted with actually led to less desire for them, leading to less desire to devote time, energy, and resources to the relationship. It seems that rather than the partner receiving extra attention being a point of pride or affirmation of a good mate choice, it signals that you could potentially lose them.

In the third study, researchers had 190 participants recall “a real incident that either involved unsolicited attention directed at their partner without any reciprocation or a neutral interaction.“ Once again, participants who thought their partner received unsolicited attention reported lower sexual desire for the partner and a greater desire to belittle and threaten their rival. The attention from another potential partner likely created feelings of jealousy and the potential loss of the partner.

Conclusion

You may like to think that your own reaction to your partner getting hit on would be a sense of flattery, greater attraction toward the partner, or a desire to invest more to display dedication to the relationship. However, this data shows the opposite happening. The "attractive partner paradox" reveals that learning how others desired one’s partner didn't make the partner more attractive but encouraged greater distancing from that partner.