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Questionnaire: What attracts you?

Phillip Hodson
Saturday 13 September 2008 00:00 BST
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Although opposites may attract, your best chance of long-term happiness comes from meeting someone whose personality is broadly similar to your own. The most successful couples share the same values. So which individual traits would most attract you to a partner? Do good looks matter more than goodness? Is sex more important than soul? Are you more of a material hedonist than a cautious moralist?

Tick your two likeliest answers to each question and add up your scores below. (If you and your partner both do this questionnaire, your scores should be similar!)

1. You hear on the news that your ex-partner has made a huge amount of money. Do you:

a. Wonder "what might have been" had the relationship not ended when it did

b. Send them a message offering your heartiest congratulations

c. Sadly shake your head and pity them for their materialistic way of life

d. Immediately call them up and propose a rapprochement

2. Your best friend ends a relationship with a partner to whom you have always felt attracted. You are asked to help the couple reconcile but the lover invites you round by email for a midnight rendezvous. Do you:

a. Grab your overnight bag and jump in the car

b. Warn your friend they've in fact had a lucky escape

c. Feel flattered for a moment but continue to mediate

d. Circulate the incriminating email to your entire address book

3. A child is being smacked in the supermarket. A stranger reads the situation, persuades the child to stop crying and the parent to calm down. Do you:

a. Decide to marry the stranger on the spot

b. Feel relief because all that noise is now over

c. Admonish the stranger for interfering in someone else's family life

d. Worry that you couldn't bear to live with such an emotionally literate paragon

4. You lock eyes across a crowded hotel lobby with a fascinating stranger. They brush past you dropping a piece of paper with a mobile phone number written on it. Do you:

a. Ignore the event because you are the guest speaker at a conference

b. Ring at once, even though it might be nothing more than an advert for a pizza parlour

c. Hoard the paper like a guilty secret – perhaps for months or even years

d. Imagine yourself caressing this stranger in Room 69

5. While swimming at the seaside, you fall into a conversation with a delightfully amusing companion, but upon emerging from the water you notice their physique is strongly unappealing. Do you:

a. Carry on with the conversation regardless

b. Dive back into the sea

c. Resolve to be less judgemental in future

d. Find them on reflection much less funny

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