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Sounds like one of you might have a health condition. She could be underweight or anemic, you could be overweight or etc.



I'm pretty sure that totally healthy people also prefer different temperatures.

And it's common that women prefer it slightly warmer; men do have a slightly higher metabolic rate on average even when they have the same height/weight, and those extra calories that the body uses end up as heat.


It's common, but I find it strange considering women have overal much more fat, so you would expect the roles will be reversed.


Maybe not a health condition, might just be the body's set point.

There are three biological states: body is cold and needs to warm itself, body temp is right (no effort required), body is hot and needs to cool itself.

I was born in hot southern climate, my wife in a cold norther climate. For me, "body is cold" is rather unnatural and uncomfortable. For my wife, "body is hot" is the same. Her internal furnace is always on, my internal cooling system is always on.

She is happiest at 18C ambient, I am happiest at 22C.

If you want a biological mechanism to explain this, it's called epigenetics, and the key factor would be the environment your mother was in while you were in the womb and she was forming your body.


I'm not 100% sure of this. Totally anecdotal but... I was born and raised in a continental climate, where during winters most day you would stay between -2C and 1C and sometimes you can get -10C during nights. I remember feeling cold but it wasn't that extreme.

Then in my twenties I moved to a warmer, near the sea place where a cold winter is when you get 2/3 Celsius degrees in the coldest night and after a few years of that life, now when I go back the place where I was born in winter, I feel fucking cold (and I have special winter jackets for that).


My anecdote is the other way around. I was born in the subtropics, grew up w/o A/C. It never got below freezing.

I moved to a colder climate. The first few years I complained that the summers were never hot enough. I expected and wanted to walk out of an A/C'ed building into a wall of heat and humidity.

Now I'm used the colder weather, and find 15C/60F to be a wonderfully comfortable temperature.

And nowadays I find winter is the only season to visit where I grew up, if I want to feel comfortable.

I figured it wasn't epigenetics or some such, but rather that your body could adapt to it. I remember once when it was -23C/-10F for a week then warmed up to -10C/14F. I rolled the windows down on the car because I felt so warm ... and then I noticed the bank thermometer and was surprised.


It's fairly normal for different people to prefer different temperatures, and to a large extent it's probably a learned thing. In particular, the idea of what normal room temperature is varies quite widely around the world.


Not OP, but my wife and I are both quite thin and have no health issues. She is always colder than I am.


I think one of them is a woman.




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