Your Taste Buds Change In Surprising Ways When You’re In A Long-Term Relationship

Unsplash/Joshua Ness

Couples who have been together for quite some time already know that you end up sharing a lot more than a bed when you find your person. But a new study reveals how similarities among long-term mates appear in our biology as well.

Researchers from Poland and Germany found 100 heterosexual couples between the ages of 18 and 48 who had been together for anywhere from three months to 45 years for the study. They then recorded whether they liked or disliked to smell things like rose, eucalyptus, smoked meat and leather, and whether they liked or disliked to taste sweet, salty, sour, umami or bitter foods. As to be expected, the couples that had been together the longest reflected the most similar preferences for both smells and tastes without knowing what their partners chose.

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It makes sense though, right? Throughout years and years together, you share countless meals, use the same laundry detergent, even burn the same candles. Thanks to the habitual nature of these choices, they ultimately become part of our evolution as individuals who simply share the same space.

Some social scientists think that in choosing the person we want to settle down with, we ultimately look for commonalities among everyday preferences like favorite foods and smells, but most available research hones in on personality trait similarities instead so that connection early on still needs to be explored.

Interestingly, though, the similarities observed in this new study weren’t impacted by the couples’ moods, levels of happiness, or satisfaction in the relationship. At the end of the day, environmental factors seem to have the strongest hold on our senses, and that’s a pretty important relationship to recognize.