sept 1 2010 151 if you live with your mate long enough eventually you will look like each other think like each other and become so similar your friends will have trouble telling you apart right not really according to new research that challenges the longheld belief that many years of cohabitation causes spouses to grow more alike as the years roll by the research by psychologists at michigan state university and the university of minnesota is based on a relatively huge data base of 1296 couples who have been married for an average of 198 years it was published in the current issue of the journal personality and individual differences what they found is that couples who had been married for a long time up to 39 years were no more alike in fundamental personality traits than newlyweds leading the researchers to conclude that personalities do not grow more similar as the years pass more likely the couples were looking for specific traits during the courtship and they ended up with someone who was very much like themselves they may not have been conscious of that at the time mikhila humbad a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at michigan state and lead author of the study said in a telephone interview so does that forever put to rest the thought that opposites attract not necessarily because the study focused on personality traits like extroversion vs introversion a happy disposition vs a sourpuss a social butterfly vs a hermit those traits are likely to remain constant throughout an adults lifetime humbad said unlike hobbies interests and lifechanging events that can also define us so this is a fairly narrow window but it flies in the face of conventional wisdom after all we all know someone who even ended up looking like the family dog so surely our personalities converge as we blend our lives together maybe not when humbad and her colleagues began studying the large data base collected by the minnesota center for twin and family research they were struck by the fact that married couples seemed so similar to each other at least in terms of definitive personality traits