Why do we seek out long-term relationships? A new study explores our deepest motivations

People are drawn to lasting romantic relationships for emotional connection, love, companionship, and positive shared experiences rather than money, social pressure, or other practical benefits, according to research published in Evolutionary Psychological Science.

Across human societies, most people form lasting intimate partnerships. Romantic relationships can provide reproductive, financial, protective, and emotional benefits. However, these benefits do not fully explain the immediate psychological reasons people actively seek a partner. Menelaos Apostolou, a researcher at the University of Nicosia, and Louiza Neophytou approached this question from an evolutionary perspective, proposing that emotions such as romantic love, loneliness, happiness, and sexual desire motivate people to pursue relationships that historically supported survival and reproduction.

Their first study included 209 Greek-speaking adults, consisting of 111 women and 98 men. Participants were recruited online through Facebook and Instagram advertisements directed toward residents of Greece and the Republic of Cyprus. The survey was also distributed to students and colleagues at a private university in Cyprus, who were encouraged to share it within their networks.

Participants responded to an open-ended prompt asking them to list reasons that might motivate them to form a lasting romantic relationship. They also reported their biological sex, age, and relationship status. Two graduate students independently organized the responses into categories, resolving disagreements through discussion with one of the authors.

The second study included 621 Greek-speaking adults, consisting of 325 women and 285 men. Participants rated all 104 reasons identified in the first study on a five-point scale. The reasons were presented in a randomized order, after which participants provided demographic information. The researchers examined how the individual reasons clustered into broader categories and higher-order domains, ranked their perceived importance, and assessed whether ratings varied by sex or age while accounting for relationship status.

Free daily newsletter

Study 1 produced 104 distinct reasons that might motivate someone to form a lasting intimate relationship. In the second study, 89 of these reasons were retained and organized into 13 broader categories. These included emotional support, relief from pressure from family and peers, romantic attraction and connection, loneliness avoidance, satisfaction of sexual needs, personal growth, pursuit of true love, financial support, family formation, need for companionship, creation of positive experiences, emotional fulfillment and well-being, and vengeance. Most participants considered several motivations important at the same time, typically endorsing between five and nine categories.

Romantic attraction and connection was the highest-rated specific motivation, followed by pursuing true love, creating positive experiences, and receiving emotional support. Financial support, relief from social pressure, and vengeance were among the least important motivations.

The 13 categories formed two higher-order domains: emotional fulfillment and instrumental reasons. Emotional fulfillment—which included love, companionship, emotional support, positive experiences, sexual satisfaction, and personal well-being—was rated substantially more highly than instrumental motivations, such as obtaining financial support, satisfying social expectations, or making a former partner jealous.

Statistically, there were no significant sex differences between men and women in their motivations for seeking a relationship. Age differences were more apparent, with older participants placing greater importance on avoiding loneliness and having companionship, but less importance on forming a family.

Of note is that participants came from Greek-speaking cultural contexts; the relative importance of emotional and instrumental motivations may differ in societies with different social expectations or levels of economic interdependence. As the data relied on self-reports, participants may have under-reported certain instrumental motives, like seeking financial support, due to a desire to present themselves favorably.

Overall, this work suggests that people generally seek lasting romantic relationships not for a single practical purpose, but because relationships offer a combination of emotional connection, love, companionship, shared experiences, and personal fulfillment.

The research, “Why do People Form Intimate Relationships? An Exploratory Investigation in a Greek-Speaking Sample,” was authored by Menelaos Apostolou and Louiza Neophytou.