People are generally drawn to long-term romantic relationships for emotional connection, love, companionship and shared positive experiences rather than primarily for money, social pressure or other practical benefits, according to new research published in Evolutionary Psychological Science.
The study, titled Why do People Form Intimate Relationships? An Exploratory Investigation in a Greek-Speaking Sample, examined the motivations that lead people to seek lasting romantic partnerships. The findings suggest that emotional fulfillment tends to outweigh instrumental considerations, although people typically report multiple reasons for wanting a relationship.
Across cultures, many adults eventually enter lasting intimate partnerships that can provide reproductive, financial and protective benefits. Yet these potential advantages do not necessarily explain the immediate psychological motivations that lead individuals to actively seek romantic partners.
Inside the new relationship research
Researchers Menelaos Apostolou and Louiza Neophytou of the University of Nicosia approached the question from an evolutionary psychology perspective. They proposed that emotions and psychological states such as romantic love, loneliness, happiness and sexual desire may motivate people to form relationships that, over evolutionary history, could have provided survival and reproductive advantages.
In their first study, the researchers surveyed 209 Greek-speaking adults, including 111 women and 98 men from Greece and the Republic of Cyprus. Participants were recruited through social media and a private university network and were asked to freely list reasons that might motivate them to form a lasting romantic relationship.
Participants also reported their sex, age and relationship status, allowing the researchers to examine demographic patterns. Two graduate students independently grouped the open-ended responses into themes, with disagreements resolved through the involvement of one of the study authors.
The second study expanded the analysis to 621 Greek-speaking adults, including 325 women and 285 men. Participants rated 104 previously identified reasons on a five-point importance scale presented in randomized order before providing demographic information.
Key motivations and how they cluster
From the first study, the researchers identified 104 distinct reasons for entering a long-term intimate relationship. Following the second study, 89 reasons were retained and organized into 13 broader categories representing common motivational themes.
These categories included emotional support, relief from social or family pressure, romantic attraction and connection, avoidance of loneliness, satisfaction of sexual needs, personal growth, pursuit of true love, financial support, desire to form a family, companionship, creation of positive experiences, emotional fulfillment and well-being, and motivations related to vengeance.
Most participants endorsed several motivations rather than a single reason, typically spanning between five and nine categories. This suggests that decisions about pursuing long-term relationships are often shaped by multiple overlapping considerations.
Romantic attraction and connection emerged as the highest-rated specific motivation, followed by the pursuit of true love, creating positive experiences and receiving emotional support.
Financial support, relief from social pressure and revenge-related motivations were among the lowest-rated reasons. Within this Greek-speaking sample, practical or strategic considerations therefore appeared to be less important than emotional motivations.
Emotional versus instrumental reasons
The researchers further organized the 13 categories into two broader domains: emotional fulfillment and instrumental reasons.
Emotional fulfillment included motivations involving love, companionship, emotional support, positive shared experiences, sexual satisfaction and personal well-being. Instrumental motivations included considerations such as obtaining financial support, responding to social or family expectations or attempting to provoke jealousy in a former partner.
Participants rated emotional fulfillment substantially higher than instrumental considerations when evaluating why they might enter a lasting relationship.
The findings therefore suggest that, among the people surveyed, intimate relationships were primarily valued as potential sources of emotional connection and psychological fulfillment rather than as purely practical arrangements.
However, because the research examined what participants reported about their motivations, it cannot establish that these stated reasons fully capture all of the factors influencing real-life relationship decisions.
Differences by age and cultural context
The researchers found no significant overall differences between men and women in their reported motivations for forming long-term intimate relationships. Within this sample, the results therefore did not support the idea that men and women generally pursue lasting relationships for fundamentally different reasons.
Age was associated with several differences. Older participants placed greater importance on avoiding loneliness and companionship, while giving relatively less importance to forming a new family than younger participants.
The researchers noted that the cultural context of the study is important. Both samples consisted of Greek-speaking adults from Greece and the Republic of Cyprus, and motivations could differ in societies with other economic conditions, gender roles, family structures or expectations surrounding romantic relationships.
The study also relied on self-reported motivations. Responses may therefore have been influenced by social desirability, particularly for reasons that could be viewed negatively, such as financial gain, social pressure or revenge.
The samples were also not designed to represent people across all cultures. Cross-cultural research will be necessary to determine whether the same hierarchy of emotional and instrumental motivations appears in populations with substantially different social and economic circumstances.
Despite these limitations, the research provides a detailed framework for understanding the reasons people say they seek lasting intimate relationships. Rather than identifying a single universal motive, the findings suggest that people typically have several overlapping reasons, with romantic connection, love, companionship, positive shared experiences and emotional support among the most highly valued.
The study also provides a foundation for future research examining how these motivations vary across cultures, ages and social conditions. Comparing populations in different societies could help determine which motivations are relatively consistent and which depend more strongly on cultural and economic circumstances.
