The Dating Deal Breakers Survey: The Nation’s Turn Offs and Turn Ons

Everybody has attributes that they consider attractive when sizing up a prospective partner – whether it’s offering to pay the bill on a first date, complimenting an outfit or wearing a particularly enticing cologne. But do you know how many other people share your preferences, or how you come across to the person you’re trying to impress?

With Love Island back on our screens, and plenty of people reflecting on their own relationships as a result, our Dating Deal Breakers Survey, conducted among 2,000 UK adults aged over 18, aims to uncover which behaviours people see as the ultimate ick, who’s most likely to be lucky in love, and how best we should conduct ourselves in romantic situations. Take a look at the results of the survey organised by CasinoGuardian.

First Impressions: Turn Ons and ‘Icks’ Revealed

First impressions are everything, and that’s never truer than when you’re on a first date. Our survey asked people which behaviours would leave them feeling as though they’d finally got lucky in love, and which would be an instant turn-off when sizing up a prospective partner. The latter are also known as ‘icks’, a term that has taken social media by storm over the last year and is defined as “when attraction to a current or potential partner is suddenly flipped to a feeling of disgust”.

The survey found that the biggest turn-offs on first dates were a partner being rude to waiting staff (20%), arriving late to a date (17%) and speaking only about themselves (15%). Furthermore, the survey showed that the debate around who pays on a date is still going strong, with more than one in ten people likely to lose interest if their partner insists on splitting the bill.

First date icks revealed:

Icks	Percentage
They’re rude to the waiting staff or bartender	20%
They arrive to the date late	17%
They only speak about themselves	15%
They insist on splitting the bill	12%
They insist on ordering food or drinks on your behalf	11%
They don’t offer to pay or split the bill on a date	9%
They insist on only ordering the cheapest menu items	7%
They are visibly looking at other people on a date	5%
They insist on only ordering the most expensive menu items	4%
Other	0%

A further one in ten people would lose interest if their partner ordered food or drinks on their behalf, whilst some would get the ick if instructed to order only the cheapest menu items.

But what about how we conduct ourselves on first dates? It’s not just our prospective partners who can make off-putting faux pas, as the findings show that 15% of those surveyed have accidentally called their date by the wrong name, whilst 8% have actually forgotten their prospective partner’s name altogether and been too nervous to ask for it again.

Interestingly, the results also suggested that people who are better-looking can get away with more first-date mistakes than others, as the majority (62%) of those surveyed said they’d be willing to overlook icks or minor red flags if they thought their date was good-looking, while a further 19% said their date was better-looking in real life than they had appeared online.

Managing Romantic Situations: Rights and Wrongs

So there are first dates, and then there are other inherently romantic situations that still carry a fair degree of pressure, such as meeting a new partner’s family or attending a wedding.

The nation isn’t free from making faux pas at these events – in fact, it’s quite the opposite, with the survey revealing that a staggering one in five people are guilty of committing the ‘inexcusable’ wedding blunder of wearing white, even when the bride has explicitly forbidden it.

Despite this generally being seen as an attempt to upstage the bride and even regarded as bad luck, 19% of guests have worn white, whilst a further 29% confess that they’ve intentionally tried to out-dress fellow guests and the bride at the event. Neither is good, clearly, as 34% of those surveyed consider dressing OTT to be tasteless, whilst a further 63% see wearing white as ‘unacceptable’.

When it comes to other wedding behaviours that are frowned upon, the results show that the most commonly committed offences include getting too drunk (22%), changing the seating plan (18%) and arriving late to the ceremony (15%), whilst one in ten people have brought an unexpected or uninvited guest to the wedding reception.

So, how do people make a good first impression in other formal situations? The survey shows that one of the romantic life events people find most stressful is meeting their parents-in-law (43%), with the majority of women admitting that they put off doing so for as long as possible (51%).

Interestingly, a third of respondents admitted that they were more nervous about meeting their partner’s parents when they didn’t view the relationship as a long-term arrangement (29%), whilst 27% said they had already looked up their partner’s family members on social media beforehand in order to find good discussion points for the first meeting.

In both situations, it seems that we don’t think harshly of those who need a little liquid courage, with the majority of those surveyed (78%) considering drinking heavily at a wedding to be relatively acceptable, whilst over a quarter (26%) also considered drinking to be understandable and acceptable when meeting a partner’s family for the first time.

Luckiest in Love Demographics

So, even if you know exactly how best to navigate a romantic situation and are comfortable with the way you conduct yourself on a first date – are you still less likely to find love when the stars don’t align? The survey also asked people when and how they met their current partner, how happy they are in their relationship and what their background is, to identify which of us are more predisposed to love than others.

Interestingly, from a star-sign standpoint, the survey showed that it is Gemini (21 May to 21 June) that has had the most success in the search for ‘the one’, with the majority currently in happy and healthy relationships, whilst Capricorn (22 December to 19 January) has experienced the fewest significant heartbreaks of the astrological signs (31%). Meanwhile, the least lucky signs were Taurus (20 April to 20 May), Cancer (21 June to 22 July) and Libra (23 September to 23 October). Other star signs that do well with their significant others include Pisces (19 February to 20 March), who have been on the smallest number of bad dates (25%).

Accents also play a big part in how attractive we find someone, with the Scottish accent deemed the most attractive in the UK and the Northern Irish accent ranking second, as 22% of those surveyed considered it the hottest. At the other end of the scale, the Brummie accent – local to Birmingham – the Essex accent and the Cockney accent were voted the biggest turn-offs in the UK.

It seems that the circumstances under which we meet someone can influence how successful that relationship becomes, with the survey showing that July is the month in which people are most likely to meet their soulmate or life partner, followed by October. The least likely time of year to find a partner is April, while those who met their partner in May were most likely to suffer serious heartbreak.

Furthermore, the findings reveal that those who sleep with their prospective partner on the first date are more likely to stay with them in a long-term relationship, with 33% of respondents doing so, whilst people who put off meeting their parents-in-law are also more likely to enjoy a happier relationship than those who try to get that first meeting out of the way early on.

Summary

While there’s no set route to success when it comes to meeting ‘the one’, it is interesting to see that we all make mistakes when dating and that some of us may simply be luckier in love than others. Fortunately, life is not like the Love Island villa and nobody’s watching your every move, so feel free to make these mistakes and enjoy the journey.