In their target article, Wahring et al. provide interesting lines of argumentation to show that long-term romantic relationships are more important for men than for women across different stages of a relationship. As part of their framework, they also apply evolutionary perspectives, namely the sexual strategies theory (SST: Buss & Schmitt, Reference Buss and Schmitt1993) and strategic pluralism theory (SPT: Gangestad & Simpson, Reference Gangestad and Simpson2000). While we do not object to evolutionary analyses of human behavior, we argue that Wahring et al. apply these approaches in a selective and contradictory way.

First, Wahring et al. discuss the explanatory value of SST for their framework. SST predicts a stronger urge towards short-term mating and multiple sexual partners for men compared to women. This prediction follows from parental investment theory (Trivers, Reference Trivers and Campbell1972). Because women invest more energy in offspring through pregnancy and nursing and have only limited and large gametes, they are also expected to be choosier than males when selecting a partner (Trivers, Reference Trivers and Campbell1972). As such, women are expected to be more reluctant to engage in short-term matings compared to men (Buss & Schmitt, Reference Buss and Schmitt1993). Interestingly, Wahring et al. embrace this notion to explain why men are more likely to initiate romantic relationships. According to the authors, “a stronger sex drive among men could explain the relatively greater tendency […] to pursue and initiate sex with romantic partners.” Here, they refer to the fact that men are more likely to initiate short-term matings. However, short-term matings are defined by their absence of emotional commitment and their short timeframe (Buss & Schmitt, Reference Buss and Schmitt1993) and are driven by lust and attraction (Fisher, Reference Fisher1998). Moreover, SST predicts that men with short-term mating motivation will avoid women that extract commitment and investment (Buss & Schmitt, Reference Buss and Schmitt1993). This seems to be in stark contrast with the application of SST by Wahring et al., where the authors propose short-term mating proclivity in men as a driver to engage in long-term romantic relationships characterized by emotional attachments. Thus, the authors apply SST in such a way that men’s motivation to engage in casual sexual relationships ends up as the causative reason for the formation of long-term, emotionally committed romantic relationships. This raises the question of why the authors invoke an explanation that explicitly distinguishes between short- and long-term mating motivations and how they define these concepts in the first place.

We propose an alternative explanation, which to some extent aligns with sexual strategies theory but places more emphasis on the risk of relationship initiation for women, regardless of a short-term or long-term mating context. As mentioned before, because of their greater parental investment in offspring, women are expected to be choosier than men (Trivers, Reference Trivers and Campbell1972). To avoid premature investment in partners unlikely to provide support for offspring, women may rely on cognitive mechanisms that serve as safeguards (Haselton, Reference Haselton2003; Trivers, Reference Trivers and Campbell1972). An example is the sexual underperception bias that has been observed in women. Women often underperceive romantic interest from men (Bendixen, Reference Bendixen2014; Haselton & Buss, Reference Haselton and Buss2000; Perilloux, Easton, & Buss, Reference Perilloux, Easton and Buss2012), while men often overperceive romantic interest from women (Haselton, Reference Haselton2003; Samara, Roth, & Kret, Reference Samara, Roth and Kret2021). As a result of this underperception bias, women may keep a greater emotional or physical distance from men expressing interest. Conversely, their overperception bias could be a proximate explanation for the fact that men are more likely to initiate relationships, without necessarily attributing this to distinct short-term or long-term mating strategies. And again, conversely, at an ultimate level, women are expected to be more careful to initiate relationships in general, given that relationships (both short- and long-term) are associated with lust and attraction (Fisher, Reference Fisher1998) and thus risk of pregnancy.

Turning to relationship dissolution, Wahring et al. highlight a contradiction between SST and the literature on romantic relationships: while SST suggests that women are motivated to adopt long-term mating strategies, empirical evidence shows that women are more likely than men to initiate breakups. To resolve this contradiction, the authors turn to SPT. This framework emphasizes the context-dependence of mating strategies and proposes that individuals flexibly adjust their behavior based on social, environmental, and biological factors (Gangestad & Simpson, Reference Gangestad and Simpson2000). In this light, they argue that modern women, due to increased financial autonomy, are now more able to end unsatisfying relationships without depending on men for economic support. However, this shift in framing is problematic, as SST and SPT are not easily reconcilable; they generate different predictions about the flexibility and origins of sex differences (Bleske & Buss, Reference Bleske and Buss2000). By using SST to explain why men are more likely to initiate relationships and SPT to explain why women are more likely to end them, the authors present an inconsistent evolutionary account. For example, if women’s financial independence nowadays enables greater freedom in ending relationships, then similar shifts, such as access to contraception, should also reduce the costs associated with short-term mating. This, in turn, would diminish sex differences in mating motivation. Yet, the authors frame short-term mating as the key difference underlying male relationship initiation, without explicitly considering context-dependence. In sum, their evolutionary account remains inconclusive: do they believe sex differences in mating are biologically hard-wired, or are they contextually flexible as SPT would suggest?

To conclude, even though Wahring et al. report an interesting sex difference in the importance of romantic relationships, we believe that inconsistencies remain in their application of evolutionary explanations for this difference. If clarified, this would strengthen their framework by also providing more convincing ultimate explanations underlying sex differences in relationship formation and maintenance. In our opinion, crucial additions to strengthen the evolutionary component of the present framework would be (1) to differentiate more clearly between short-term and long-term relationships, (2) to differentiate between motivations to initiate romantic relationships (or just matings) and those to maintain these relationships, (3) to specify under which conditions SST and SPT would apply, (4) to consider whether both theories are reconcilable at all, and (5) to demonstrate whether the observed empirical patterns align with predictions following from SST and SPT.