The importance and perceived benefits of romantic relationships dependent on gender and sexual orientation

This project examines how the importance and perceived benefits of romantic relationships vary as a function of individuals’ gender identity and sexual orientation. The research project investigates whether men and women differ in their motivation to pursue romantic relationships, in their relationship expectations and perceived socio-emotional support, and whether these gender differences depend on being in heterosexual versus same-sex partnerships. The study builds on work showing that men, compared to women, often strive more for romantic relationships and benefit more from them, and integrates this with theories on social roles and the gender-as-relational approach. It also addresses the perspective whether men profit primarily from being male or from having women as partners, by explicitly including queer relationships in addition to heterosexual ones. Using a semi-experimental online-survey designs, two studies assess (1) relationship striving and relationship expectations, and (2) perceived socio-emotional support from partners and relationship satisfaction (exploratory variable), alongside the exploratory question in both studies about political orientation having an impact on such effects. Study 1 is done with singles assessing the relevant relationship perception before a relationship and study 2 is done with people in relationships assessing relevant variable(s) of relationship benefits during relationships. By comparing cisgender men and women in both different-sex and same-sex relationships or if they're single cisgender men and women, it aims to clarify how gender and sexual orientation jointly shape dependence on and benefits from romantic partnerships. In addition it should specifythe mechanism in which gender shapes relationship perception by differentiating whether the empirical effect that men benefit more from being in relationships comes from them being men or from being in relationships with women. In study 1, we expect to find a main effect of participants' gender (male vs. female) on relationship expectation, a main effect of participants' gender (male vs. female) on relationship striving, an interaction of gender (male vs. female) × sexual orientation (heterosexual vs. bi/pansexual vs. homosexual) regarding relationship expectation and an interaction of gender (male vs. female) × sexual orientation (heterosexual vs. bi-/pansexual vs. homosexual) regarding relationship striving. In study 2, we expect to find a main effect of participants' gender (male vs. female) on perceived socio-emotional support and an interaction of gender (male vs. female) × relationship type (same-sex vs. opposite-sex) regarding perceived socio-emotional support. The reduction of gender into a binary construct has been decided upon as there is a lack of prior research that would warrant the forming of hypotheses about further gender identities. In addition, practical limitations would have made the recruitment of equal group sizes less likely if more gender identities than men and women would have been included in this project. People who have not been assigned the sex at birth that they identify with, will therefore be excluded in confirmatory analyses, but included in exploratory analyses of the same questions to build a first foundation for future research. Additionally, there is a difference in the conceptualisation of the relevant variable sexual orientation between study 1 and 2 as Wahring et al. (2024) specify in their phase model of romantic relationships that the relationship perception before the relationship is regarding all potential partners while the relationship perception and benefits during the relationship to are focused on one specific partner. Therefore, we decided to differentiate the sexual orientation groups in study 2 by asking for the partner's gender instead of the participant's sexual orientation. In study 1 a higher level of differentiation is possible by respecting the fact that bi-/pansexual people's perception of future partners is shaped by more than one gender of a potential dating partner. Pan-/bisexual individuals also form the biggest part of the LGBTQ*-Community, yet they are often underrepresented (Tangeman, 2025; Tavarez, 2024) and should therefore be included where possible to legitimately talk about the factor of sexual orientation. In contrast to the methodological limitations that would come along with including all genders,equal group sizes are not a concern here as statistically bisexual people should form a bigger group of potential participants than homosexual people.