To what extent should physical features matter in choosing a spouse?

They say beauty is skin deep. What you see on the outside may not necessarily match what you will encounter from the inside.

Even so, human beings continue to be influenced by physical beauty. More so, in selecting a marriage partner.

Moses Alumada is a marriage counsellor at Satir Marriage and Family Institute. He also teaches at Pan-African Christian University in the department of Psychology.

He notes that physical beauty is only superficially important. “It is important because, for many, it is the first thing you see and like. And if you like what you see, you start to like that person. Many people choose a spouse based on how they look: especially men,” he says.

But for the marriage to last, a spouse will need beauty from inside; something Alumada calls ‘beauty of the heart’.

“While physical beauty attracts you to a person, the beauty in their heart is what will keep you loving them,” he says.

Men, he notes, tend to prioritise physical beauty. To a man, the game of dating, he says, comes with a rush, to seize the most beautiful woman. Men love conquests. This has left many a man unable to maintain one marriage.

“This is why men tend to move from one woman to the next because they will always come across a woman who looks more beautiful than the one they already have,” Alumada says.

According to him, until a spouse stops looking at their better half solely based on how they look physically, they will never sustain a marriage. Someone new – who looks better – will always come along.

He says: “My advice is that physical beauty should be secondary. Just in case your spouse loses that beauty in an accident (like his/her face getting burnt), you will not leave them for someone else yet they have been committed to you.”