According to a study published in , people are drawn to long-lasting romantic relationships for emotional connection, love, companionship, and positive shared experiences, rather than money, social pressure, or other practical benefits. evolutionary psychology.
In human societies, most people form lasting close partnerships. Romantic relationships provide reproductive, economic, protective, and emotional benefits. However, these benefits do not fully explain the direct psychological reasons why people actively seek partners. University of Nicosia researchers Menelaos Apostoulou and Luiza Neophytou approach this question from an evolutionary perspective, proposing that emotions such as romantic love, loneliness, happiness, and sexual desire motivate us to pursue relationships that have historically supported survival and reproduction.
Their initial study included 209 Greek-speaking adults (111 women and 98 men). Participants were recruited online through Facebook and Instagram advertisements targeting residents of Greece and the Republic of Cyprus. The survey was also distributed to students and colleagues at private universities in Cyprus, who were encouraged to share it within their networks.
Participants responded to an open-ended prompt asking them to list the reasons that motivate them to form a long-lasting romantic relationship. They also reported their biological sex, age, and relationship status. Two graduate students independently categorized the responses and resolved any disagreements through discussion with one of the authors.
The second study involved 621 Greek-speaking adults (325 women and 285 men). Participants rated all 104 reasons identified in the original study on a 5-point scale. Reasons were presented in random order, after which participants provided demographic information. The researchers investigated how individual reasons fall into broader categories and higher-order domains, ranked their perceived importance, and assessed whether ratings differed by gender and age while accounting for relationship status.
Study 1 identified 104 distinct reasons that may motivate people to form lasting close relationships. In the second study, 89 of these reasons were retained and organized into 13 broader categories. These include emotional support, freedom from family and peer pressure, romantic attraction and connection, avoidance of loneliness, sexual fulfillment, personal growth, the pursuit of true love, financial support, family formation, the need for companionship, creating positive experiences, emotional fulfillment and happiness, and revenge. Most participants considered multiple motives to be important at the same time, typically endorsing between five and nine categories.
The most highly rated specific motivations were romantic attraction and connection, followed by seeking true love, creating positive experiences, and obtaining emotional support. Financial support, relief from social pressure, and revenge were among the least important motives.
The 13 categories formed two higher order domains: emotional fulfillment and instrumental reasons. Emotional fulfillment such as love, companionship, emotional support, positive experiences, sexual satisfaction, and personal well-being were rated significantly higher than instrumental motives such as gaining financial support, meeting social expectations, or making a former partner jealous.
Statistically, there were no significant gender differences between men and women in their motivations for seeking companionship. The age difference was more pronounced, with older participants placing more value on avoiding loneliness and having companions, but less on forming a family.
Of note, the participants were from Greek-speaking cultural backgrounds. The relative importance of affective and instrumental motives may differ in societies with different social expectations and levels of economic interdependence. Because the data relied on self-report, participants may have underreported certain instrumental motives, such as seeking financial support, out of a desire to present themselves favorably.
Overall, this study suggests that people generally seek lasting romantic relationships not for a single practical purpose, but because the relationships provide a combination of emotional connection, love, companionship, shared experiences, and personal fulfillment.
The study, “Why do people form close relationships? An exploratory investigation in a Greek-speaking sample,” was authored by Menelaos Apostolou and Louiza Neophytou.
