What does it mean to be dependent? According to the target article, men are more dependent on romantic relationships than women because men need women to satisfy needs for intimacy/emotional connection more than women need men to satisfy those same needs. However, dependence is not solely determined by need satisfaction. It is also determined by the balance of power between partners – which is governed by the comparative investments each partner puts into meeting the other’s needs.

Investments refer to physical, emotional, and psychological resources partners expend strengthening their relationship (Rusbult, Agnew, & Arriaga, Reference Rusbult, Agnew, Arriaga, Van Lange, Kruglanski and Higgins2012). For instance, Amelia increases her investment in her marriage each time she sets work aside to listen to Aiden’s problems, discloses personal failings, forgives Aiden’s chronic forgetfulness around household chores, and prioritizes alone time with Aiden over time with her family and friends (Rusbult & Van Lange, Reference Rusbult and Van Lange2003). Once expended, such investments cannot be recouped. They essentially function as sunk costs that psychologically attach Amelia to Aiden (Murray et al., Reference Murray, Holmes, Aloni, Pinkus, Derrick and Leder2009).

When partners are equally invested, romantic relationships benefit both men and women (Drigotas, Rusbult, & Verette, Reference Drigotas, Rusbult and Verette1999). However, through the socialization practices the target article reviews, women are conditioned to invest more in romantic relationships than men (Yang & Girgus, Reference Yang and Girgus2019). Women provide more emotional support to men than men provide to women (Dykstra & de Jong Gierveld, Reference Dykstra and de Jong Gierveld2004; Ogolsky & Bowers, Reference Ogolsky and Bowers2013); women spend more time on household chores and childcare than men (Horne et al., Reference Horne, Johnson, Galambos and Krahn2018; Koster et al., Reference Koster, Poortman, Van Der Lippe and Kleingeld2022); women devote more cognitive resources to organizing family life than men (Daminger, Reference Daminger2019); women are more forgiving of men than men are of women (Miller, Worthington, & McDaniel, Reference Miller, Worthington and McDaniel2008); women are more likely to acquiesce to men than men are to women (Impett & Peplau, Reference Impett and Peplau2003), and women are more willing than men to sacrifice career to better marital and family relationships (Fernández-Cornejo et al., Reference Fernández-Cornejo, Escot, Kabubo-Mariara, Kinyanjui Kinuthia, Eydal and Bjarnason2015; Villanueva-Moya & Expósito, Reference Villanueva-Moya and Expósito2023). Women also report feeling more invested in and being more committed to their current romantic relationship (Le & Agnew, Reference Le and Agnew2003).

According to interdependence theory (Kelley & Thibaut, Reference Kelley and Thibaut1978) and the principle of least interest (Waller, Reference Waller1938), dependence in a relationship reflects the balance of power between partners. The partner who is less invested in the relationship possesses more power in the relationship than the partner who is more invested (Vanderdrift, loerger, & Arriaga, Reference VanderDrift, loerger, Arriaga, Agnew and Harman2019). Why? Because the less invested partner has less to lose, and therefore, the more invested partner needs to work harder to keep the less invested partner committed to the relationship (Righetti & Impett, Reference Righetti and Impett2017). In other words, to the extent that Amelia invests more in maintaining her marriage to Aiden than he invests, she traps herself in a position where she needs to keep investing in Aiden to try to leverage or increase his investment in her (Murray et al., Reference Murray, Aloni, Holmes, Derrick, Stinson and Leder2009). Put in the language of dependence, as the more invested partner, Amelia is essentially more dependent on Aiden to keep up his end of the relationship bargain than he is dependent on her.

Therefore, women’s greater emotional, cognitive, and behavioral investments in their romantic relationships relative to men put women in a less powerful, and thus more dependent, position relative to men (Felmlee, Reference Felmlee1994). Women’s greater dependence on men rather than vise versa is illustrated by four aspects of romantic relationship life.

First, men are more likely than women to behave as though their partner is expendable, suggesting that men actually feel less dependent than women in romantic relationships. For instance, relative to women, men perceive themselves as having more alternatives to their current relationship (Le & Agnew, Reference Le and Agnew2003). In addition, when romantic partners are less physically attractive and potentially more expendable, men are less likely than women to stay sexually faithful (McNulty et al., Reference McNulty, Meltzer, Makhanova and Maner2018) and satisfied (Meltzer et al., Reference Meltzer, McNulty, Jackson and Karney2014).

Second, women work harder than men to preserve their relationships when they are in jeopardy – labors that are more characteristic of those who feel less powerful/more dependent (Righetti & Impett, Reference Righetti and Impett2017). For instance, in romantic relationships, women more so than men continue to provide responsive support when it gets more difficult or costly to provide – as is the case when men are more stressed (Neff & Karney, Reference Neff and Karney2005) or women themselves are more stressed (Bodenmann et al., Reference Bodenmann, Meuwly, Germann, Nussbeck, Heinrichs and Bradbury2015).

Third, as the more invested/less powerful partner, women are more dependent on men to change to better their own status than men are dependent on women to change. Illustrating men’s advantaged status, men are more likely to see their partner as living up to their standards, whereas women are more likely to see men as falling short (Heyman et al., Reference Heyman, Hunt-Martorano, Malik and Slep2009; Vangelisti & Daly, Reference Vangelisti and Daly1997). Men are also more likely than women to see women’s greater time spent on family/household maintenance as fair (Koster et al., Reference Koster, Poortman, Van Der Lippe and Kleingeld2022). In fact, men even use women’s greater domestic labors as an opportunity to prioritize their own leisure (Kamp Dush, Yavorsky, & Schoppe-Sullivan, Reference Kamp Dush, Yavorsky and Schoppe-Sullivan2018). Thus, in ongoing romantic relationships, men typically benefit from the status quo and seek to preserve their advantaged status (Christensen & Heavey, Reference Christensen and Heavey1990) – making women the disadvantaged/dependent sex.

Finally, men are more likely than women to endorse beliefs about men and women in relationships that strengthen women’s dependence on men. For instance, men score higher than women on benevolent sexism (Glick et al., Reference Glick, Lameiras, Fiske, Eckes, Masser, Volpato, Manganelli, Pek, Huang, Sakalli-Ugurlu, Rodríguez Castro, Pereira, Willemsen, Brunner, Six-Materna, Wells and Glick2004; Zhu & Chang, Reference Zhu and Chang2020), attesting to men’s perception of themselves as the more powerful/less dependent partner. And men are more likely than women to become aggressive and hostile in situations that challenge their advantaged status, such as their partner trying to assert some semblance of power over them (Cross & Overall, Reference Cross and Overall2019; Overall et al., Reference Overall, Hammond, McNulty and Finkel2016).

In conclusion, the target article is largely correct. Because men benefit so much from women’s greater investments, men need romantic partners (women) more than women need romantic partners (men). However, men’s greater “neediness” is more likely to make women more dependent on men than vise versa because tending to men’s greater needs tips the relative balance of relationship power against women.