Irish gals most picky in Europe when choosing mate

A SURVEY of 13,000 men and women has found that Irish women are the most demanding in Europe when it comes to picking potential partners.

Research by the online dating agency, PARSHIP quashes that widely-held perception of Irish women as relaxed, easygoing types and paints us as high-maintenance madams who won’t settle for second best.

Traits like the ability to communicate, honesty, fidelity, sense of humour and an ability to compromise are all vitally important to Irish women.

Interestingly, Irish men picked the same traits as being important, but compared to 90% of Irish women thinking fidelity was important, just 78.7% of men think it is important.

While honesty was seen as vitally important by 97% of Irish women, this figure fell to 91.6% amongst their male counterparts.

Irish women certainly seem to value openness, with nearly 88% seeing it as an important characteristic of a male partner. Just 77% of Irish men rank it highly.

And not only do Irish women want all the characteristics of the ‘new man,’ more than 80% of them also want a good lover. So the message for Irish men from Irish woman is that they must be prepared to indulge Irish woman’s every mood, discuss feelings at length, be as loyal as Rover the Dog before turning into an Olympian lover.

Psychiatrist and PARSHIP dating expert, Dr Victoria Lukats has hypotheses that might explain women’s higher standards.

“It could be a cultural phenomenon — perhaps women are encouraged to be more choosy when it comes to dating and settling down with a partner. Many women still feel some degree of social pressure not to have too many partners in order to avoid being adversely judged — so it pays for them to be more discerning from the outset,” she said.

“In addition, it might even be partly explained by biological differences between the sexes. From an evolutionary point of view, maybe women who were choosier about their sexual partners passed on a survival advantage to their offspring, whereas men might be programmed to maximise the chances of survival of their genes by applying slightly lower standards in what they look for in a partner.”

The survey could make us more appreciative of the relaxed standards of Irish men. Four out of 10 Austrian men would only date woman with a toned body and only eight out of 10 Italian men would expect a woman to be honest. Tellingly, just eight out of 10 Italian women expect their men to be faithful.

In contrast, just three out of 10 Swedish men place importance on a woman’s clothes and grooming compared to six out of 10 Italian men. Seven out of French men place the highest importance on looks with the second most attribute being intelligence.