Germs from you, germs from me

It is sometimes said that two people in a relationship begin to look more and more alike. It seems to depend a bit on how far you zoom.

In BBC Science Focus, someone took a closer look at this question. Because are two people really more alike in a relationship? And I don’t mean they wear the same ANWB jacket, but they really have more physical similarities. Stanford University researchers examined 517 couples. When they first met and decades later. They saw that the long-term couples were indeed quite similar, but that this did not change over time. Rather, it suggests that we are looking for someone.

However, it is also true that in a relationship we start to look more and more alike. You can only see this if you zoom in really well. An earlier study of microbes in our skin showed that they do indeed adapt to partner microbes. This is especially true for the germs on our feet. One algorithm has even successfully matched people to partners with 86% accuracy based solely on the microbes on their skin.

Read more: You share everything with your partner…even your skin microbiome†