The Power and Peril of Life Beyond Romantic Relationships

Do you want companionship, security, emotional support, and personal growth? You know where you are supposed to turn for the fulfillment of needs like those—to a romantic partner. Judging from popular culture, punditry, and conventional wisdom, nothing else should compare. Insecure single people who swallow those storylines are at risk of experiencing FOMO, the fear of missing out.

Single people who embrace their single lives know better. They understand that opportunities for companionship, security, emotional support, and personal growth, as well as independence and self-expansion (having new and exciting experiences), can be found in relationships with all sorts of people, not just romantic partners. They also know that they can find the fulfillment of their needs in other domains, such as work, artistic pursuits, religion, and sports.

New research shows that it is not just single people who realize all this. College students in romantic relationships, as well as people who have been married for decades, can also get many of their needs met by people and pursuits outside of their romantic relationships. When they do, they realize that there are alternatives to their romantic relationship. Maybe they experience their own FOMO. They start to wonder whether they really want to stay in their marriage or romantic relationship.

Syracuse University professors Laura V. Machia and Morgan L. Proulx documented those psychological dynamics in three studies. Their research was published online in October 2019 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Married People Who Get More Emotional Support Outside of Their Marriage Wonder Whether Their Relationship Might Be in Trouble

Data from the first study came from a large, nationally representative sample of adults in the U.S., ranging in age from 20 to 75. Participants were 4,458 people who were married (90 percent of them) or had a relationship similar to a marriage. They had been married for an average of 25 years, and they generally rated their marriage very positively (an average of 8 on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 indicating the best possible marriage or close relationship).

The key question was about the informal emotional support they had received, defined as: “getting comfort, having someone listen to you, or getting advice.”

Participants indicated the number of hours of informal support they received in a month from:

• Their spouse or romantic partner
• Their friends, parents or guardians, in-laws, children, other family members, or anyone else

They also answered questions about their romantic relationship, including: “During the past year, how often have you thought your relationship might be in trouble?”

Here’s what Machia and Proulx found: The more informal support these married people got from outside of their romantic relationship, the more often they thought that their relationship might be in trouble.

But maybe the psychological dynamics went the other way: Maybe people who thought that their romantic relationship was in trouble were the ones who sought out support from people outside of their relationship.

The researchers looked separately at the people who were not getting much support from their romantic partner and those who were. The same psychological dynamics occurred for both groups: The more emotional support they were getting outside their marriage, the more they felt that their marriage was in trouble. Having a very supportive spouse didn’t shield them from wondering about their marriage if they were getting support outside of their marriage. And remember, these were generally very strong marriages—they had lasted an average of 25 years and were rated very positively.

Coupled People Who Get More Fulfillment of Their Needs for Companionship, Independence, Security, and Personal Growth Outside of their Romantic Relationships Think More About Ending Those Relationships

The researchers were trying to make the case that people in a romantic relationship who get their needs fulfilled outside of that relationship would start to think about ending their romantic relationship. They believed that the psychological thought process would follow a certain pattern:

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• Hmmm, I’m getting things like companionship, independence, security, self-improvement, and self-expansion outside of my romantic relationship, and I am giving support to other people outside of that relationship, too.
• That means I have alternatives to my romantic relationship—I can get my needs met elsewhere.
• I’m thinking about ending my romantic relationship.

In the second study, they measured each of those steps in the process separately. The participants were 410 college students who were in romantic relationships. They were much younger (19, on the average), but like the married people from the first study, they rated their romantic relationships very positively.

The needs the participants were asked about were:

• Companionship (sharing time and activities)
• Independence (having my own space and making my own decisions)
• Security (feeling supported, protected)
• Self-improvement (experiencing personal growth)
• Caregiving (giving support, protection)
• Self-expansion (having new and exciting experiences)

For each of those needs, participants indicated the extent to which they were fulfilled by:

• Their romantic partner
• People and situations other than their romantic partner and relationship

The researchers averaged together all the different kinds of needs because the answers were similar. I think that needs for independence, self-improvement, and self-expansion are especially likely to be satisfied outside of romantic relationships, so I would have liked to see those results analyzed separately.

Also, sexual contact (having physical intimacy) was part of the scale the researchers used, but they did not include that item in their analyses. They explained that getting sexual needs met “from outside of the relationships violates relationship expectations in a more profound way than other needs.” True enough, but it still would have been interesting to see those results.

To see whether the participants thought they could get their needs met outside of their romantic relationship, they were asked about that directly in a series of questions. Participants indicated, for instance, whether their needs for intimacy, companionship, security, and emotional involvement could be fulfilled in other relationships—for example, with friends or family members.

To determine whether the participants were thinking about breaking up, they were asked whether they agreed with statements such as:

• “More and more, it comes to mind that I should break up with my partner.”
• “I have been thinking about ending our romantic relationship.”

The results showed that the thought processes seemed to follow the pattern the researchers predicted. The people who were getting their needs fulfilled by people and situations outside of their romantic relationship realized that they had alternatives to their romantic relationship for things like companionship, independence, security, and personal growth. In turn, the people who recognized that they had alternatives for getting their needs fulfilled were more likely to think about breaking up.

Again, the authors looked to see whether that way of thinking only occurred in romantic relationships that were not very supportive. And again, they found the same pattern for people whose partners were not very good at fulfilling their needs and for those whose partners were great at that.

In one more study, Machia and Proulx tracked how the process unfolded over time. College students who were in romantic relationships—along with their partners, if they agreed to participate—answered the same kinds of questions at four different points in time, about a week apart each time.

The psychological dynamics were as predicted. The people who were getting more of their needs fulfilled by people and situations outside of their romantic relationship one week were more likely to say, the next week, that they had alternatives to their romantic relationship. And when they realized they had good alternatives, they were more likely to think about ending their romantic relationship.

Another Myth Bites the Dust

Nothing from this research refutes the significance of support within romantic relationships. In fact, the authors found that people who get more of their needs fulfilled within their romantic relationships also feel more satisfied with those relationships.

Apparently, though, need fulfillment within a romantic relationship, even with the best romantic partners, just does not erase the significance of what can be found outside of romantic relationships. When coupled people realize that there are alternatives to their romantic relationship—other people and other pursuits that provide the fulfillment of many of their needs—then they start thinking about ending their marriages or romantic relationships.

It is just not true that romantic relationships provide the sole, or even necessarily the best, opportunities for fulfilling our many needs. People who are not romantic partners matter.

We can get companionship, security, and emotional support from friends and relatives. We can find independence and personal growth as single people—probably even more so than if we were in committed romantic relationships. We can have new and exciting experiences in workplaces, sporting arenas, artistic endeavors, and in the pursuit of our passions.

Life outside of marriage and romantic relationships is a powerful thing. That power cannot be rendered irrelevant, not even by the most supportive romantic partners.

If your spouse is great at fulfilling your needs, you will be more satisfied with your romantic relationship than if your spouse had not been so great. But the rest of your life will still matter. Sometimes your positive experiences in your life outside of your romantic relationship will make you wonder how much you really need or want that relationship to continue.