Wahring, Simpson, and Van Lange argue that romantic (mono-heterosexual) relationships are of greater importance for men due to diverging gender socialisation, which means that men depend on dyadic romantic partnerships for emotional support more than women. We argue that the proposal does not sufficiently account for contradictory evidence from research on fear of being single (FOBS) and the role of oppressive narratives in romantic dissolutions. Once those are factored in, the stark gender division proposed by the authors seems less significant than social resilience for post-romantic dissolution well-being.

Spielmann et al. (Reference Spielmann, MacDonald, Maxwell, Joel, Peragine, Muise and Impett2013) describe FOBS as concern, anxiety, or distress regarding the current or prospective experience of being without a romantic partner. FOBS has been identified as a mediator in the relation between relationship status and loneliness (Adamczyk, Reference Adamczyk2018), as a moderator in the relation between singlehood and mental health outcomes (Wongsomboon et al., Reference Wongsomboon, Smith, Macapagal, Newcomb and Whitton2024), and as a unique predictor of maladaptive relationship behaviours beyond what anxious attachment predicts (Spielmann et al., Reference Spielmann, MacDonald, Maxwell, Joel, Peragine, Muise and Impett2013, Reference Spielmann, MacDonald, Joel and Impett2016). In romantic dissolutions, greater FOBS has been associated with greater dependency on unsatisfying relationships and lower likelihood of initiating their dissolution (Spielmann et al., Reference Spielmann, MacDonald, Maxwell, Joel, Peragine, Muise and Impett2013), as well as preservation of interest in former partners (Spielmann & Cantarella, Reference Spielmann and Cantarella2020).

As for gender differences, there is suggestive evidence that women experience greater FOBS than men (Adamczyk, Reference Adamczyk2018; Sprecher & Felmlee, Reference Sprecher and Felmlee2021). Even though both men and women have similar experiences of stereotyping or discrimination for being single (Dupuis & Girme, Reference Dupuis and Girme2024; Greitemeyer, Reference Greitemeyer2009; DePaulo & Morris, Reference DePaulo and Morris2005), women’s greater FOBS has been related to greater societal pressures to enter romantic relationships. These societal pressures might come from the close social environment (Sharp & Ganong, Reference Sharp and Ganong2011; Sprecher & Felmlee, Reference Sprecher and Felmlee2021) and from media culture (Timmermans, Coenen & Van den Bulck, Reference Timmermans, Coenen and Van den Bulck2019).

This leaves us with two contradictory interpretations regarding women’s well-being in romantic dissolutions. On one hand, the target paper argues that women fare better than men when single after romantic dissolutions, due to their greater access to emotional support. On the other hand, popular beliefs and other societal pressures might lead women to experience greater FOBS, which could diminish their well-being in the case of romantic dissolution.

Moreover, from an intersectional approach, gender differences become less significant with regard to the negative social perceptions of singlehood that motivate FOBS. For example, gay men can be doubly stereotyped because of their sexual orientation and their single status (Javaid, Reference Javaid, Mayer and Vanderheiden2021). Being single is connected to increased negative evaluations as people age – again, with older women being more harshly perceived than older men for being single (DePaulo & Morris, Reference DePaulo and Morris2005). Further, it has been suggested that Black women suffer less singlehood stereotyping than Black men and both White men and women (Pudrovska, Schieman & Carr, Reference Pudrovska, Schieman and Carr2006). All these variables are expected to influence well-being after romantic dissolutions.

Wahring, Simpson, and Van Lange acknowledge the relevance of stereotyping in popular media and societal assumptions (see introduction), and recognise that gender norms shape relational behaviour, yet they invoke contextual factors (3.3) to dispel contradictory evidence to their position. Namely, they recast this evidence as culturally or situationally contingent, without reassessing how such evidence might destabilise their central claim that love matters more to men than to women. We suggest that differences in well-being after romantic dissolution depend, instead, on social resilience to negative social perceptions and hence to FOBS.

FOBS is directly motivated by socially shared narratives such as “being single is a failure,” or “the best life is the life shared with a romantic partner.” This sort of narrative has been qualified by philosophers as “oppressive” (Lindemann, Reference Lindemann2001). Oppressive narratives – such as racist or misogynistic ones – can contribute to maladaptive cognitive practices (Fabry Reference Fabry2025), as well as disrupting sense of self and social recognition of moral agency (Lindemann, Reference Lindemann2001). These capture the potential for harm of singlehood stereotyping: FOBS is not merely a psychological attitude, but a threat to individuals’ self-conception, cognition, and behaviour.

Relevantly, the philosophical study of socially shared narratives can resolve the contradiction noted above between empirical findings that women fare better after breakups, and societal narratives and research on FOBS that predict a less clear picture, beyond simply alluding to contextual factors. Lindemann (Reference Lindemann2020) explains that marginalised groups who are targets of oppressive narratives often engage in the creation and dissemination of counterstories that subvert oppressive narratives, contributing to the repair of their sense of self and moral agency. Sáenz Benavides (Reference Sáenz Benavides2025) has argued that this is a form of narrative resistance that can counteract not only self-demeaning beliefs but also transform the emotional experiences that come with oppression – such as shame or fear. They then acknowledge the possibility of social resilience to oppressive narratives for some individuals who are already in marginalised groups.

Women, gay men, or older people who suffer more single stereotyping are already in marginalised groups. We hypothesise that members of already marginalised groups are better equipped to engage in narrative resistance, which in turn can counteract the effects of oppressive narratives on well-being. This happens even if individuals belonging to these groups are under more social scrutiny about their singlehood status and even experiencing higher FOBS.

Our resilience hypothesis has two advantages over the gender divide proposed by the authors in the target article. First, contradictory evidence need not be explained away by more or less generic contextual factors. Indeed, context influences post-dissolution well-being, but the specific contributing factors are a) belonging to marginalised groups, and b) social resilience. Re-interpreting their results through this lens reveals that women do indeed prove more socially resilient than men in general, but not universally, as shown by the contradictory evidence. For that reason, although the divergence in post-romantic-dissolution well-being may show across a binary gender divide, it is not itself dependent on gender. Hence, the importance placed on romantic relationships is not itself dependent on gender either. Second, our approach opens a route for future research that overcomes an unnecessary restriction to binary gender and heterosexuality. If our hypothesis is correct, the gender divide will have lesser or no relevance in comparison studies among queer or racialised people.