“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” (a quote attributed to Albert Einstein)

We admire Wahring et al.’s compilation of evidence consistent with their claim that romantic relationships matter more to men than to women. It serves as a needed counterweight to widespread stereotypes that women value romantic relationships more than do men. Yet, we believe the claim the authors make in their title is too simple.

Additional motives for romantic relationships and additional operational measures of romantic relationships “mattering” to men and to women should be considered.

The authors focus primarily on a single reason why romantic relationships matter to people: that is, that romantic relationships are a source of intimacy and emotional support. Intimacy and emotional support may well be the primary reason romantic relationships matter to both men and perhaps to women as well and attaining intimacy and support from romantic relationships per se does seem to be more important to men than to women. Yet, it is important to consider additional benefits that romantic relationships can provide to people, including financial benefits; having a partner whose attributes (e.g., beauty, accomplishments, power) reflect positively on them - (Sigall & Landy, Reference Sigall and Landy1973); companionship (Kwang et al., Reference Kwang, Crockett, Sanchez and Swann2013); social standing (Kwang et al., Reference Kwang, Crockett, Sanchez and Swann2013); self-expansion (Aron et al., Reference Aron, Lewandowski, Branand, Masheck and Aron2022); increases in self-concept clarity (Emery & Hughes, Reference Emery, Hughes and Gardner2023); having a partner with whom to have regular sex and/or with whom conceive or adopt and raise a child, and deriving satisfaction, self-esteem, positive emotion, and meaning in life from providing a partner with support (e.g., Aknin et al., Reference Aknin, Sandstrom, Dunn and Norton2011; Williamson & Clark, Reference Williamson and Clark1989). Romantic relationships may matter to men and/or to women for any one or any combination of these reasons. Considering these additional reasons why relationships may matter to men and to women will add nuance to our understanding of how, when, and why romantic relationships matter to men and to women.

Relatedly, the authors also emphasize just a few operational measures of mattering to support their claims, such as expecting greater benefits from relationships, physical and mental health benefits from relationships, the likelihood of initiating break-ups, and the amount of suffering occurring after break-ups. Yet, many additional and plausible operational measures of mattering exist. For instance, who is the highest in fear of being single (Spielmann et al., Reference Spielmann, McDonald, Maxwell, Joel, Peragine and Muise2013)? A recent study suggests it is women (Sprecher & Felmlee, Reference Sprecher and Felmlee2021). Who contributes more financial support in romantic relationships? The current answer is men, although the extent to which this is true has been declining over time (Fry et al., Reference Fry, Aragao, Hurst and Parker2023). Who is most willing to provide emotional support to a partner? The authors themselves cite work suggesting that it is women who provide more care to partners than do men (e.g., Liao et al., 2004; Ogolsky & Bowers, Reference Ogolsky and Bowers2013; Taylor et al., Reference Taylor, Klein, Lewis, Gruenewald, Gurung and Updegraff2000) and providing support to a romantic partner may be more meaningful and matter more to women more than to men. Using additional operational indices of mattering also will yield a more nuanced view of how, when, and why romantic relationships matter to men and to women and suggest that in some ways these relationships matter more to women.

Additional caution is needed when only considering results emerging from studies of mixed-gender relationships.

The authors start their review by cautioning us that it is based on studies of mixed-gender and straight relationships. The necessity of relying on such studies is understandable because published relationship science studies are overwhelmingly studies of mixed-gender relationships (McGorray et al., Reference McGorray, Emery, Garr-Schultz and Finkel2023; Williamson et al., Reference Williamson, Bornstein, Cantu, Ciftci, Farnish and Schouweiler2022). Toward the end of their review, the authors also state that in future work, researchers should examine how bisexual, gay/lesbian, and straight men and women differ in the importance they place on romantic relationships as well as how they deal with breakups. We agree.

Yet, despite their cautionary notes, throughout the paper including in its title, statements are made about what is true for men versus what is true for women. For instance, one such sentence reads, “…men are both more willing and more likely than women to form new romantic relationships sooner after a relationship has ended.” Note, though, that this statement would be equally true if it were restated as “once a relationship has ended, people who were in a relationship with a woman are more likely to form new romantic relationships sooner than are people who were in a relationship with a man.” Efforts to disentangle possible effects associated with being male relative to being female from possible effects of having a male or female partner (and their interaction) are important.

In this regard, including considerations of studies of same-gender relationships (be they relationships of gay, lesbian, or bisexual individuals) and comparing their results with those from studies of mixed-gender relationships (be they heterosexual or bisexual individuals) may be helpful. For example, if men (generally) seek new relationships more quickly after break-ups than do women, this should be true for straight, gay, and bisexual men (relative to their female counterparts) regardless of the gender of their ex-partners; but if this is true for people who had been paired with a woman (generally), this should be true for straight men, lesbians, and bisexuals of both genders whose ex-partner was a woman.

We do acknowledge that incorporating studies of romantic relationships among people with minority sexualities and making sense of the resulting findings will not be easy. First, not many studies with adequate samples of straight, gay, lesbian, and bisexual people exist to help in this process. Second, even though currently available literature suggests that the quality of romantic relationships among people with minority sexualities is equivalent to that of romantic relationships among straight individuals (e.g., Elizabeth et al., Reference Elizabeth, Wongsomboon and Clark2025; Graham & Barnow, Reference Graham and Barnow2013; Kurdek, Reference Kurdek2004), there also exists literature documenting average differences between people who have minority sexualities and straight people in experiences of discrimination and in depression. This will complicate using studies with sexual minorities to disentangle questions about how much and why men and women value romantic relationships.

It is also of note, as the authors do explicitly mention that the effects they report only account for the experiences of cisgender men and women and that we should worry about the generalizability of their findings. We agree but, as just mentioned we should include people of varying sexualities in reviews of how much relationships matter to men and women, not just to ensure generalizability of findings obtained with cis-gender individuals to other people, but also, to disentangle links between a person’s own gender and relationships mattering from links between the gender of their partner and relationships mattering.

Finally, the authors note, their review is also based almost entirely on studies of WEIRD samples (that is, samples from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies) and that other types of samples should be examined. We agree that including populations from other cultures will be important and suspect that doing so will add yet more nuance to answering the questions of why, how, and for whom romantic relationships matter to men and to women.