London - Research shows that men and women have different views on the ideal height of their partner.
A woman is happiest with a man who towers over her by eight inches.
A man, however, prefers to be just three inches taller than the lady in his life.
The figures come from a Dutch researcher, who asked hundreds of university students how satisfied they were with their partner’s height.
Gert Stulp, of the University of Groningen, also asked his volunteers how happy they were with their own height.
This revealed men consider 6ft 3in to be the ideal height, while women would be satisfied at 5ft 9in, the journal Personality and Individual Differences reports. Recent figures revealed the average height of men in the UK is 5ft 9in, while the average height of a woman is 5ft 3in.
The research also revealed neither sex liked the idea of a couple in which the man was forced to look up to the woman.
Stulp said: “Both men and women preferred to be in a couple where the man was taller than the woman, but not too tall.”
Viren Swami, a psychologist at the University of Westminster, said that women may view tall men as being more fertile than their shorter counterparts. Alternatively, tall women may be seen as “violating cultural norms”, he said. - Daily Mail