There's more to marital bliss than finding someone who texts back quickly.
We also want our partners to be loving, financially secure, and maybe have a college education (or two).
It wasn't always this way.
Before we had modern medicine and casual attitudes toward sex, people held far different opinions about what constituted a worthy spouse. According to a 2013 study, people in 1939 focused more on maturity, good health, and chastity compared to people in 2008.
The results of that study, which compared data across both time periods for 18 different traits, recently made its way to University of Oxford data visualization expert Max Roser, who runs the research website Our World In Data.
Here's the full breakdown, which Roser shared on Twitter:
Factors like emotional stability and religious background have held mostly steady. But certain traits stand out as stark reminders of the time each group lived in.