A person’s lifestyle – their daily habits and choices – has a huge impact on how happy, healthy and successful they are. It also affects the people they meet and attract, especially in dating. Yet a great deal of time is spent trying to perfect the superficial elements of dating, such as looking good and being witty in conversation, rather than examining one’s own lifestyle, which has a bigger effect on how they behave in relationships and ultimately how their love lives progress.
The concept of lifestyle has been analysed in different ways in psychology and sociology. Initially, it was interpreted as a style of personality, as described by Alfred Adler, i.e., as the framework of guiding values and principles which individuals develop from their early years onwards and which end up defining a system of judgement that informs their decisions throughout their life. This approach, developed further in Milton Rokeach’s work and Arnold Mitchell’s VALS research, and later by Lynn R. Kahle in her LOV research, aims to understand lifestyles as profiles of values organised hierarchically, which differ between population sectors.
Other sociological currents have interpreted lifestyle as an expression of social position, using the concepts of Bourdieu and Weber. These theories focused on the way that lifestyles are manifested in daily practices and activities, as well as in consumption attitudes and behaviours, and on how they differentiate people within a status group. This approach aimed to identify the lifestyles of different populations and groups, while maintaining a certain degree of continuity in the behaviours and attitudes that define them, thus distinguishing them from each other and forming distinct groups within society [5].
Theories that favour an internal interpretation of lifestyle focus on individual psychological factors and try to explain how personal choice influences behaviour. They imply that a person’s personality has a major influence on the lifestyle they adopt, which is influenced by the culture and environment to which they belong. This is the approach that is most prominent in the psychological literature and seems to be the most reflected in health psychology.
Other trends involving the concept of lifestyle focus on the way in which it evolves throughout an individual’s life. These models consider that a person’s lifestyle changes as they grow and mature, and that it is possible to identify different phases of their life in which specific lifestyles are adopted. These models reflect the concept of identity as a function of the lifestyle, and are influenced by the idea that it is essential for an individual to establish their sense of belonging to a specific community in order to feel safe [5]. However, these theories have a number of limitations and appear not to be able to provide a clear understanding of the phenomenon. They also tend to overemphasise the internal dimension of lifestyle and do not consider that a person’s lifestyles are linked to the specific context of consumption.