A new study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests that entering and maintaining a romantic relationship can lead to modest improvements in overall well-being, especially in areas directly tied to having a partner. The study found that while life satisfaction increased slightly, improvements were more pronounced in areas such as sexual satisfaction, loneliness, and how happy people felt about their relationship status. These effects were strongest among men and among people who had a strong desire to be in a relationship.
The researchers aimed to test a widely accepted idea: that being in a romantic relationship makes people happier. Although past studies have consistently shown that partnered individuals report higher well-being than those who are single, there has been skepticism about whether romantic relationships actually cause these differences. Some scholars argue that these differences may be the result of “selection effects”—that is, people who are happier or more sociable might be more likely to attract partners in the first place.
“There had been arguments in singlehood studies that maybe the idea that getting into a romantic partnership causes higher well-being was a myth. But we thought there were two main problems with this argument,” said study author Geoff MacDonald, a professor at the University of Toronto and author behind the new Substack column The Unromantic.
“One, those arguments are based on longitudinal data following people going from dating to married. We thought the more relevant question is what happens when people go from single to dating. Secondly, those arguments are based on studies on overall life satisfaction. It’s probably not surprising that getting into a romantic relationship might only cause a small bump in life satisfaction since that is an assessment of how your life is going across all the different domains in your life.”
“Even if you’re really happy to be in a new relationship, that doesn’t change your problems at work, your fight with your parents, etc. So we thought a domain-specific approach might help us see the effects of partnering more clearly, with domains that are more strongly tied to being single/partnered (like sexual satisfaction) possibly showing stronger effects of partnering.”
“Also, one critique of past literature is that you couldn’t really say partnering caused higher well-being because you can’t randomly assign people to be single or partnered,” MacDonald said. “But by using propensity score data analytic methods that helps account for variables that lead people to be more likely to be partnered or single, we can more confidently say the changes in well-being we note are caused by partnering.”
For their new study, the research team followed more than 3,100 single adults over a six-month period. At the beginning of the study, all participants identified as single and had been so for at least three months. Participants were between 18 and 39 years old, and the sample was fairly balanced in terms of gender and sexual orientation.
Six months later, the researchers checked in again to see who had entered a romantic relationship and who had not. They divided the participants into three groups: those who stayed single the entire time, those who started a new relationship and were still in it at the second timepoint, and those who entered a relationship but broke up before the study ended.
To measure well-being, the researchers asked participants about their life satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, satisfaction with their relationship status, and feelings of loneliness. They also accounted for factors that could influence these outcomes—such as age, gender, and how much participants initially wanted to be in a relationship—using a method called propensity score weighting. This technique helps reduce bias by making the comparison groups more similar.
Three outcomes stood out. The researchers found that participants who entered a relationship and stayed in it reported higher well-being at the follow-up compared to those who stayed single. The biggest gains were seen in areas closely tied to being in a relationship. Sexual satisfaction increased substantially, and people were also much more satisfied with their relationship status. Loneliness also dropped significantly. While the direction of the effects was expected, their magnitude was surprising.
“The relationship status and sexual satisfaction effects meet the criteria for large effects (some of the biggest I’ve seen in my career),” MacDonald told PsyPost. “In our research and in other research looking at long established couples, there is a huge advantage in sexual satisfaction for partnered people. So it looks like partnered people are higher in sexual satisfaction than singles in the long term, and that’s not because they were that much higher in sexual satisfaction before they ever partnered.”
“We tested for moderation by desire for a partner. We were not surprised that singles who desired a partner more experienced the largest gains in well-being from partnering. However, we were surprised that even people with below average desire for a partner (i.e., -1 SD) exhibited gains in sexual satisfaction, relationship status satisfaction, and lower loneliness in the medium to large effect size range.”
Among participants who entered a relationship, life satisfaction did go up as well, but the increase was small.
“Our data do suggest that partnering causes higher well-being, but that’s true most strongly in the domains that are structurally tied to having a partner like satisfaction with relationship status (people are happier being partnered on average) and sexual satisfaction,” MacDonald explained. “Life satisfaction went up a small degree. So if you’re looking to romantic partnering to change your life you probably have the wrong expectations. But if you’re looking for partnering to add value to parts of your life that a partner can actually help (like your sex life), you probably have a more realistic sense of the well-being gains that are likely to result from partnering.”
Those who started a relationship and then broke up did not report the same benefits. Their well-being remained largely unchanged compared to those who stayed single, with only a small uptick in sexual satisfaction. In some cases, their satisfaction with relationship status actually dropped.
Participants who stayed single throughout the study reported little change in any well-being category, with some showing very small declines in sexual satisfaction and relationship status satisfaction. This suggests that, for many people, staying single is a stable state that does not dramatically change their well-being over short periods of time.
The effects of entering a romantic relationship were not the same for everyone. Men who entered and stayed in a relationship reported larger increases in life satisfaction and relationship status satisfaction than women who did the same.
“This growing sense that maybe it’s a myth that romantic relationships increase well-being doesn’t seem to hold up to these data,” MacDonald remarked.
But the study focuses on average patterns, so its findings should not be taken to mean that every individual will experience benefits from entering a relationship. People who are content being single or who value independence may not experience these kinds of gains. In fact, entering a relationship might even interfere with life goals for some individuals.
“It is important to note we are not saying that everyone would gain in well-being from partnering,” MacDonald said. “For example, we doubt that people who identify as aromantic would experience these gains.”
“Overall, we think people should be thinking about singlehood/partnership not as which is better overall, but what parts of my life can they affect positively and negatively. We have a past study showing that satisfaction with work/life balance decreases when you partner. So expect your sexual satisfaction to go up, but your friend network to shrink and your time for your hobbies to be less (at least at first).”
Although the study used advanced methods to control for confounding factors, the authors caution that it cannot definitively prove that romantic relationships cause better well-being. The method they used can only account for factors that were measured. Other variables, such as individual values, personality traits, or social environment, could also play a role.
The time frame of the study was also relatively short. It is unclear whether the improvements in well-being seen in the first six months of a new relationship would hold up over longer periods. Previous research has shown that satisfaction often declines in long-term relationships, which may affect whether these early gains are lasting.
“We only studied people six months into the relationship so it’s not clear how long the effect would last,” MacDonald noted. “It’s complicated because there’s almost no studies that compare both the effect of getting into a relationship and staying single in the same study. So we know relationship satisfaction decreases with time, but if staying single is also associated with decreases in life satisfaction, there may still be an advantage to getting partnered in terms of life satisfaction. This is a really important direction for future research, to do studies that simultaneously follow people who go from single to partnered as well as people who remain consistently single for that same period.”
“We think that singlehood studies has been highly focused on singles who do not want partnership,” he added. “That’s an important focus, but has maybe been missing out on the fact that most people benefit from getting in a good relationship, and dealing with unmet romantic desire needs to be another focus of singlehood studies.”
People who want to explore this research in more depth can visit Geoff MacDonald’s Substack, where he has published three posts that each highlight different aspects of the study.
The study, “In What Domains Does Entering a Romantic Relationship Boost Well-Being? A Longitudinal Investigation,” was authored by Helena Yuchen Qin, Elaine Hoan, Samantha Joel, and Geoff MacDonald.
