Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande and Lana Del Rey have much in common – there are the 31 Grammy nominations between them and they boast a combined net worth of $1.56 billion across album sales, beauty brands and blockbuster films.

But, for some fans, their similarly questionable relationship choices are what really stand out.

Talented, accomplished and beautiful, the trio are raising eyebrows for arguably 'dating down'.

But, while their preferences might seem unconventional, experts suggest that these seemingly mismatched pairings might not be as wide of the mark as many people think.

If those commenting can agree that attraction is important, it's the notion that attraction transcends physical looks that is the key here.

Relationship experts tell the Daily Mail why the couples confusing onlookers could actually be the most likely to go the distance. 

Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco have divided opinion since confirming their relationship in December 2023

Last summer, Grande, 31, announced the end of her two-year marriage to real estate broker Dalton Gomez. Less than a week later, it was reported that she was in a new relationship with her Wicked co-star Ethan Slater, 32, who is also known for playing SpongeBob SquarePants in the TV show's Broadway adaptation.

The unfiltered reactions from fans were swift.

'I can't take Ariana seriously. You could have anyone in the entire world and you pick Ethan Slater,' one wrote on X. 

'She could do sooo much better,' another responded.

Much was the same for Selena Gomez, 32, who is now engaged to Grammy-nominated music producer Benny Blanco after dating for a year. In December 2023, the Only Murders in the Building star was even forced to defend her then-boyfriend on Instagram after many fans called Blanco, 37, 'crusty' and 'unhandsome'.

'Local homeless man with his celebrity girlfriend,' someone wrote on X, as another fan said: 'Literally WHAT does she see in him??'

Then, there was Lana Del Rey, 39, who secretly tied the knot with divorced father-of-three Jeremy Dufrene, 49, a Louisiana-based alligator tour guide. 

Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater shocked fans with the announcement that they were dating, just days after Grande's divorce from Dalton Gomez was made public

Lana Del Rey and Jeremy Dufrene tied the knot in a shock wedding in September 2024

To outsiders, it might seem puzzling but the pattern isn't new.

When it comes to dating, the term 'league' serves as an unspoken rule in society that people of the same attractiveness level should be together, and anyone dating outside of such expectations is simply mismatched.

In the media, rom-coms such as She's Out of My League and She's All That have perpetuated this notion. A post about the classic 1989 film When Harry Met Sally went viral on X in January for the movie's apparently unrealistic application in the real world.

'One reason I hate straight romcoms so bad is because it's always that the women are gorgeous angels descended from above to grace the earth while the men look like they snuck up on here when no one was looking,' a user wrote above a clip from the movie.

However, that's not to say there isn't some truth to this supposed phenomenon. In fact, relationship experts agree that attractiveness is actually quite a low priority for women searching for a mate – especially for A-list celebrities.

'Typically speaking, women prioritize feeling safe, emotional intelligence, sense of humor significantly over physical appearance because we all know that physical appearance fades the quickest,' Sabrina Zohar, dating coach and host of the The Sabrina Zohar Show podcast, told the Daily Mail.

For someone such as Gomez, who has had her fair share of public breakups, finding compatibility with a partner might be far more important than whether he'll still look sexy in the nursing home.

Fans across social media haven't shied away from posting their unfiltered reactions about Gomez, Grande and Del Rey's unlikely relationships

'Attractiveness gets you in the door but it doesn't keep you at the table,' Zohar said.

Though Gomez's relationship with Blanco wasn't initially accepted by her fans, they quickly began warming to him because of his quirky personality and self-deprecating sense of humor.

A glance at his Instagram page shows the amateur chef downing bowls of pasta, wearing rainbow-printed overalls, joking about his 'grotesque' appearance, and occasionally sharing a heartfelt post about his fiancée.

Sabrina Bendory, a relationship expert and author of You're Overthinking It: Find Lifelong Love By Being Your True Self, believes that there's much more value in a partner who 'tends to your emotional needs' rather than looking good on the red carpet.

'Someone like Selena Gomez has dated the hot guy – she dated The Weeknd, she dated Justin Bieber – and those didn't seem to turn out so well for her,' Bendory said. 'Maybe with Benny Blanco, he makes her feel safe, he makes her feel secure.'

Grande and Slater's relationship drew even more attention due to the timeline. The two began dating shortly after he ended his marriage with high-school sweetheart Lilly Jay, a year on from the birth of their first child.

Though they've denied any overlap, Grande faced accusations of being a 'home-wrecker', and jibes went viral about Slater starring as the titular character in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical six years earlier. 

The singer has previously said she feels the 'safest' in her relationship with the music producer

Blanco popped the question to Gomez after one year of dating, as the actress shared the news with fans on Instagram

 'My girl out here dating Spongebob Squarepants,' one X user wrote.

'Ariana Grande dating Spongebob has to be the most jarring celebrity news I've seen in a minute,' another said, while someone else candidly commented: 'If Spongebob can pull Ariana Grande, I think there's a chance for all of us.'

Lest we forget, things haven't been easy for Grande, either. She was left with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after the 2017 Manchester bombing outside her concert, which claimed 22 lives, followed by the death of ex-boyfriend Mac Miller 16 months later from an accidental overdose at 26.

While appearing on the Hollywood Reporter Awards Chatter podcast in February, Grande admitted she 'was doing so much therapy, and I was dealing with PTSD and all different kinds of grief and depression and anxiety' during that time.

According to Dr Amanda Hanson – a clinical psychologist and author of Muse: The Magnetism of Women Who Stop Abandoning Themselves – that just might be behind  what Slater brings to the partnership.

'I'm always telling clients the most important thing to pay attention to when you're in a relationship is how do you feel? When you are with this person, do you feel safe? Do you feel seen? Do you feel authentic and silly and playful?

Amid scrutiny surrounding their romance, the pair have mostly kept out of the spotlight apart from brief appearances together while promoting Wicked

Slater filed for divorce from wife Lilly Jay in July 2023 after five years of marriage. They welcomed their first child together in August 2022

'Those are the signs to pay attention to and, actually, I believe that when we feel all of those things, people become more attractive to us.'

There's no denying that a partner becomes more alluring when they're the best at what they do - and, when it comes to Del Rey's new beau, he seems to be on top of his alligator tour guide game.

Del Rey is thought to have first meet Dufrene, a captain at Arthur's Air Boat Tours in Des Allemands, Louisiana, in March 2019 while being guided by him through the self-declared 'Catfish Capital of the Universe'. Then, while back in the area for Hangout Fest in May 2024, the two reconnected. 

Though Del Rey denied rumors that the pair were an item at the time, they walked down the aisle a few months later in September - a stealth move fans said was in true form for the singer-songwriter.

'I do love men who have experienced a lot of life and who have known and done it all,' she once told BBC Radio One.

Dufrene's Instagram page is filled with videos of interactions with the wild alligators that rule the bayou, fearlessly feeding his 'Cajun yard dogs' pieces of raw chicken by hand. He even has names for each of them.

The Video Games singer met alligator tour guide Jeremy Dufrene in March 2019 when she took part in one of his airboat tours

The pair tied the knot in a surprise wedding last September, not long after she denied rumors that they were a couple

Dufrene's Instagram account is filled with photos and videos of his interactions with wild alligators, which he calls his 'Cajun yard dogs'

'People need to remember that love is complicated and layered,' Bendory tells the Daily Mail. 'The reason that we're drawn to certain people is driven by so many factors that go beyond just what they look like - and looks are not going to guarantee you a happy, successful relationship.'

It's fairly common, she says, for members of the public to project ideals on to celebrities, sometimes as a result of parasocial relationships - one-sided emotional connections that form between someone invested in another person who likely doesn't even know they exist.

'We have this expectation that women who are as successful and beautiful as Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez, that they'll be with a partner at that level.

'When their choice deviates from that, it challenges our expectations and people can feel a certain way about it.'

Zohar said: 'Fans will project their own insecurities. They put these idealizations on to celebrities as if they're perfect. 

'When a woman dates somebody that they don't deem is the correct person, it challenges those projections and it causes discomfort because a lot of people think, "Well, I should also have better than that. I don't want to have to settle. And if a celebrity is doing that, what does that say about me?"'

Projecting our own expectations on to celebrity couples is a slippery slope, often leading to disappointment when they don't meet the unrealistic standards we set for them. 

'It just says so much just about society's obsession with beauty standards. As far as we've come, we do live in a culture that places so much value on outward appearance, especially for women,' Bendory added. 

'We are so hyper-fixated on appearances and, as much as we've evolved, we still are a very superficial society and we still judge books by their cover.'

The one bright side, however, is that such disappointment can influence us to question our own expectations about love and relationships – allowing us to be open to the possibility that the person we're meant to be with might not come in the package we imagined.