Do you find yourself being in one relationship after another, trying to do your best to be your best for your significant other but generally sucking at it? Well, it turns out that being bad at relationships could be genetic and biological. Researchers at Peking University in Beijing conducted a study where they interviewed 600 Chinese undergraduate students about their relationships before taking a sample of their hair to be tested for genetic material. 60 percent of the people who reported to be single had results that indicated they were more predisposed genetically to being unable to develop close physical and emotional relationships.
"Love-related behaviors, such as pair bonding and affective affiliation, are shown to be associated with the serotonin levels in the brain," the researchers wrote. The activity of certain genes that inhibit serotonin production may be "related to decreased comfort with close relationships"
As the Mic points out, biology is not destiny, so if your relationship abilities are negatively affected by your genes, don't stress. There's a way to exist in a context where those genes aren't exacerbated. It all goes back to the nature vs nurture debate; for example, if you have a genetic predisposition to depression but you have a happy, healthy, relatively stable life that isn't particularly conducive to that gene being expressed, it won't be expressed, and just because depression is in your genes it may never show up. So find someone (or multiple someones) you love, because that could be all it takes for you to stop being bad at dating.
