We appreciate this new take on falling in love, and we certainly agree with these authors that people are motivated to achieve social significance. We also like the author new breakdown of “mate value” (Eastwick & Hunt, Reference Eastwick and Hunt2014) into “merit” and “appreciation” factors and agree that merit, appreciation, and striving for significance likely promote falling in love in a multiplicative rather than additive fashion: should any of these factors drop too low, people are unlikely to fall in love for their quest for significance. Yet we think the current view of how such quests occur and the nature of the resulting feelings of love are insufficientl nuanced.

Hirsch and Clark (Reference Hirsch and Clark2019) and Reed et al. (Reference Reed, Hirsch, Alamdeen, Hopkins, Gendron and Clark2025) argue that people strive to belong (and achieve social significance) in a variety of ways. Two of these ways are (a) striving to gain general approbation from many people in the person’s social orbit and (b) striving to form communal relationships with specific others, including romantic partners. General approbation can be gained through a person’s own “merit” characteristics, and these characteristics may lead many others to attend to, admire, and seek the meritorious person out. People seeking general approbation may be attracted to a romantic partner with similar merit characteristics because acquiring such a partner will reflect positively upon them to people outside of the relationship (Tesser, Reference Tesser and Berkowitz1988). Of course, people cannot benefit from such reflections unless the meritorious partner forms a relationship with them. Thus, appreciation is also needed to gain the benefits of reflection. Almost all the work reviewed in the target article argues that attaining a partner with merit enhances a person’s significance through this pathway (e.g., Sigall & Landy, Reference Sigall and Landy1973; Bar-tal & Saxe, Reference Bar-Tal and Saxe1976; Meiners & Shepost, Reference Meiners and Sheposh1977; Little et al., Reference Little, Burriss, Jones, DeBruine and Caldwell2008; Rodeheffer, Leyva, & Hill, Reference Rodeheffer, Leyva and Hill2016; Moran & Joel, Reference Moran and Wade2022).

There is, however, another way people strive to belong and seek social significance: by forming communal relationships in which partners mutually respond to each other’s needs (Clark & Mills, Reference Clark, Mills, Van Lange, Kruglanski and Higgins2012). This path to belonging (and social significance) was emphasized by Baumeister and Leary (Reference Baumeister and Leary1995) long ago and aligns with Mikulincer and Shaver’s (Reference Mikulincer, Shaver, Kruglanski, Molinario and Jasko2025) emphasis on people feeling significant when they have secure attachments. When striving communally, the goal is to be significant to the communal partner rather than to gain approbation from everyone in the social orbit. Do communal strivers also seek merit and appreciation in a new romantic partner? Yes, but they likely construe merit, appreciation, and significance in a different manner than do general approbation strivers. For them, perceiving merit in a potential partner will have more to do with that person having qualities that make a person a good communal partner – trustworthiness, honesty, and a willingness to be understanding, caring, and to be cared for (Reis et al., Reference Reis, Lee, O’Keefe and Clark2018). The merit qualities they seek are less publicly visible than those which general approbation strivers seek, and they likely seek significance in the form of the partner caring for them but also in the form of them caring for the partner. The narcissists whom Kruglanski et al. discuss (Zeigler-Hill et al., Reference Zeigler-Hill, Vrabel, McCabe, Cosby, Traeder, Hobbs and Southard2019; Campbell, Reference Campbell1999) and the insecure people whom Mikulincer and Shaver (Reference Mikulincer, Shaver, Kruglanski, Molinario and Jasko2025) discuss may be most likely to seek significance through seeking romantic partners who will reflect positively on them; securely attached people may be more likely to seek significance through communal striving. Existing research supports the general idea that seeking significance through communal striving may trade off with seeking it through attaining general approbation (Clark et al., Reference Clark, Greenberg, Hill, Lemay, Clark-Polner and Roosth2011; Reis et al., Reference Reis, Lee, O’Keefe and Clark2018).

In turn, the approach taken by Kruglanski et al. to understand falling in love struck us as being individualistic and self-focused. Do people fall in love just because they desire significance for themselves? This likely happens for some people. Yet, as we suggest, many people (especially secure, non-narcissistic ones) likely hold a prototype of romantic love as involving mutual care, such that loving relationships include caring for a partner as well as being appreciated by a partner (Earp et al., Reference Earp, McLoughlin and Monrad2021; Clark et al., Reference Clark, Adkins, Chughtai, Elizabeth, Vangelisti, Perlman and Sprecher2026). Similarly, being appreciated and cared for can make a person feel significant, but caring for another person can too.

Another related consideration of the proposed theory is that nearly all of the research reviewed was conducted with Western populations. Robust evidence exists documenting cultural and individual differences in self-construals, such that people with independent self-construals often have different social motivations, emotions, and behaviors than those with interdependent self-construals (Markus & Kitayama, Reference Markus and Kitayama1991; Kitayama, Mesquita, & Karasawa, Reference Kitayama, Mesquita and Karasawa2006; Vignoles et al., Reference Vignoles, Owe, Becker, Smith, Easterbrook, Brown, González, Didier, Carrasco, Cadena, Lay, Schwartz, Des Rosiers, Villamar, Gavreliuc, Zinkeng, Kreuzbauer, Baguma, Martin, Tatarko and Bond2016). As such, we suspect the reasons people fall in love and the ways in which people attain significance from love will differ across cultures and individuals. Kruglanski et al.’s theory that falling in love is a function of partner merit and appreciation and is a means to an end of achieving (individual) significance may not be as applicable to people with interdependent self-construals. Rather, interdependently construed people may achieve “significance” from falling in love because it expands their self-concept through their connection with their partner. The authors do point out that context can vary the attributes of a partner that are considered to be meritorious and that cultural norms can dictate the expectancy and admiration of love, but we suggest that the applicability of the theory itself may vary across cultures and individuals.

Lastly, the authors of the target article view love as an “interpersonal positive emotion.” Many emotion researchers characterize emotions as socially constructed, such that emotion labels serve as mechanisms for understanding and communicating social meaning (Barrett, Reference Barrett2017; Lindquist et al., Reference Lindquist, Barrett, Bliss-Moreau and Russell2006; Gendron et al., Reference Gendron, Lindquist, Barsalou and Barrett2012). In light of our comments here, the experience people call romantic love likely varies considerably between people. People who have a chronically high self-focus and who pursue significance by seeking romantic partners who will reflect positively upon them may experience falling in love as a heady self-enhancing state, mixed with feelings of pride and a growing sense of having achieved general approbation. More empathic, communally striving people may experience falling in love as a more tender, warm, security-enhancing, and private emotion. Of course, yet others may experience it in a mix of these ways. This point underscores our overall thoughts on the theory: although the model of falling in love to attain significance may describe many people, we imagine there to be considerable variability in how people attain significance and experience love.