Sex differences in romantic love, relationship dissolution, and remarriage

Cross-cultural evidence shows that men “fall in love” faster than women (Bode, Luoto, & Kavanagh, Reference Bode, Luoto and Kavanagh2025), which Wahring et al. attribute to their greater dependence on romantic relationships. We offer two alternative explanations. First, a key component of women’s mate value is physical attractiveness, which men can evaluate rapidly, whereas women require more time to assess qualities relevant to men’s mate value like emotional stability and long-term commitment (Buss & Schmitt, Reference Buss and Schmitt2019).

Second, because women more than men typically require emotional investment from a mate, men have evolved a propensity to experience romantic love more readily (Bode et al., Reference Bode, Luoto and Kavanagh2025). Men also evolved deceptive male strategies (e.g., feigning or exaggerating love) to overcome women’s commitment skepticism (Haselton et al., Reference Haselton, Buss, Oubaid and Angleitner2005). Roughly 71% of men admit to doing so (Buss, Reference Buss2017). These incentives might lead men to experience genuine feelings of romantic love through self-deception to better convince potential mates (von Hippel & Trivers, Reference von Hippel and Trivers2011).

The mate-switching hypothesis proposes that women evolved strategies to exit unsatisfying pair-bonds to pursue higher-quality or less costly relationships compared to their current mateship (Buss et al., Reference Buss, Goetz, Duntley, Asao and Conroy-Beam2017). Because women’s reproductive capacity is biologically constrained due to heavy obligatory parental investment, prioritizing mate quality over quantity has historically yielded greater reproductive payoffs (Symons, Reference Symons1979). In contrast, men historically enhanced their reproductive success by mating with multiple fertile partners (Dawkins, Reference Dawkins1976), making them more likely to favor infidelity over dissolution (Fincham & May, Reference Fincham and May2017). These divergent mating strategies partially explain why women are more likely than men to dissolve relationships and suffer less post-dissolution distress.

That men are more likely to remarry is also predictable from evolutionary logic. Women’s fecundity declines steeply with age, reducing their mate value, whereas men can retain or increase mate value over time by accruing status or resources (Buss, Reference Buss2017; Conroy-Beam & Buss, Reference Conroy-Beam and Buss2019). As men age, their preference for younger partners expands their mating pool, while women’s shrinks due to their own declining reproductive value, men’s age preferences, and women’s lack of interest in younger men as long-term mates (Buss & Schmitt, Reference Buss and Schmitt2019). The presence of offspring also constitutes a greater relationship load (Buss, Reference Buss2006) for women than men, partly due to disproportionate caregiving responsibilities, but also because children indicate lower residual reproductive value. Men are generally disinclined to invest in genetically unrelated offspring and thus may be deterred from selecting mates with children. These converging factors make remarriage more likely for men.

Sex differences in survival, social support, and vulnerability to singlehood

Cross-culturally, women provide the preponderance of childcare (Wood & Eagly, Reference Wood and Eagly2002), and their survival is more critical to offspring survival than men’s (Sear & Mace, Reference Sear and Mace2008). This selection pressure led to the evolution of a suite of adaptations in women to ensure their safety. Relative to men, women possess stronger immune systems, greater fear responses, lower risk-taking propensities, and lower pain thresholds (Benenson, Webb, & Wrangham, Reference Benenson, Webb and Wrangham2022; Campbell, Reference Campbell1999). As a result, men are more likely to die from a variety of stressors than women (e.g., pathogens, risky activities), rather than being especially vulnerable to romantic dissolution per se (Dattani & Rodés-Guirao, Reference Dattani and Rodés-Guirao2023).

Because their survival was so critical to women’s reproductive success, and given our ancestral history of patrilocality, women evolved stronger motivations and greater skills in cultivating social support (Hrdy, Reference Hrdy2009). One proximate mechanism for recruiting such support may be that women hold all social partners to heightened standards. Compared to men, women express higher standards for friends (Hall, Reference Hall2011), are more bothered by friends’ transgressions (Reynolds & Palmer-Hague, Reference Reynolds and Palmer-Hague2022; Vigil, Reference Vigil2007), and are more likely to end friendships (Benenson & Christakos, Reference Benenson and Christakos2003). Women’s greater dissatisfaction and willingness to dissolve romantic relationships (Whisman, Randall, & Sorokowski, Reference Whisman, Randall and Sorokowski2025) may therefore reflect their elevated standards for interpersonal treatment more broadly.

Wahring et al. attribute sex differences in social support seeking and receipt to “social roles,” giving little attention to their evolutionary origins. Throughout ancestral history, emotional expressiveness likely harmed men’s social appeal and capacity, because their social networks consisted of coalitional alliances for hunting and warfare, where formidability, stoicism, and bravery were prioritized (Buss et al., Reference Buss, Durkee, Shackelford, Bowdle, Schmitt, Brase, Choe and Trofimova2020).

Furthermore, the Greater Protectiveness of Females theory (Stewart-Williams et al., Reference Stewart-Williams, Wong, Chang and Thomas2022) hypothesizes that humans show greater protectiveness (and control) of women due to their greater physical vulnerability and reproductive value. Women receive more social support than men, not because society arbitrarily deems it appropriate, but because evolved tendencies guide such provision. Men’s ability to “find” social support depends not only on their own motivation and capacity to seek it but also on others’ (un)willingness to provide it (Reynolds et al., Reference Reynolds, Howard, Sjåstad, Zhu, Okimoto, Baumeister and Kim2020).

Wahring et al. make a compelling case for social support as a mediator of sex differences in well-being outside of romantic relationships, but there are other reasons to expect a sex-differentiated experience of singlehood. Every human who has ever lived represented the end of a chain of ancestors who successfully reproduced. Those who did not add to their ancestral chain were disproportionately men (Betzig, Reference Betzig2012). Singlehood is therefore a more reliable cue of impending reproductive failure for men than women, resulting in greater risk-taking (Wilson & Daly, Reference Wilson and Daly1985) and distress in response to failed mating efforts (Apostolou et al., Reference Apostolou, Sullman, Birkás, Błachnio, Bushina, Calvo, Costello, Dujlovic, Hill, Lajunen, Lisun, Manrique-Millones, Manrique-Pino, Meskó, Nechtelberger, Ohtsubo, Ollhoff, Przepiórka, Putz and Font-Mayolas2023; Costello et al., Reference Costello, Rolon, Thomas and Schmitt2022; Costello, Whittaker, & Thomas, Reference Costello, Whittaker and Thomas2025).

This evolutionary logic suggests another mediator: one’s perceived ability to find a relationship. Individuals who are voluntarily single tend to report similar life satisfaction to those in relationships (Apostolou et al., Reference Apostolou, Sullman, Blachnio, Burysek, Bushina, Calvo, Costello, Helmy, Hill, Galatiani Karageorgiou, Lisun, Manrique-Millones, Manrique-Pino, Ohtsubo, Przepiorka, Saar, Tekes, Thomas, Wang and Font-Mayolas2024). Perceptions of mate availability are themselves, however, sex-differentiated. Because men are less selective, reproductive-aged women, especially those without children, can typically find a partner more easily than comparably aged men (at least for short-term relationships). This evolutionary perspective, which Wahring et al. do not invoke, may help explain why men are more averse to singlehood (Hoan & MacDonald, Reference Hoan and MacDonald2024), but does not require their interpretation that romantic relationships matter more to men because they gain more proximate benefits from them.