Apostolou Menelaos, Lajunen Timo Juhani
Department of Social Sciences, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus.
Department of Psychology, Norwegean University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
Evol Psychol. 2025 Jul-Sep;23(3):14747049251377388. doi: 10.1177/14747049251377388. Epub 2025 Sep 8.
An increasing number of people are single, meaning that they do not have an intimate partner. Existing research has focused on identifying the difficulties that people face in attracting mates. In the present paper, we propose that another factor contributing to singlehood is experiencing difficulties in maintaining intimate relationships. By analyzing data collected from 1099 Greek-speaking participants, we found that individuals who experienced greater difficulties maintaining intimate relationships were more likely to be either between-relationships single or voluntarily single rather than in an intimate relationship. For women specifically, higher scores in this dimension were also associated with a greater probability of being in an intimate relationship than being involuntarily single. Additionally, we found that the association between difficulties in maintaining an intimate relationship and relationship status was linear for men-the relationship between the two variables can be pictured as straight line-but curvilinear-the relationship can be pictured as an inverted U-shaped curve-for women.
越来越多的人处于单身状态，也就是说他们没有亲密伴侣。现有研究主要集中在确定人们在吸引伴侣时所面临的困难。在本文中，我们提出导致单身的另一个因素是在维持亲密关系方面遇到困难。通过分析从1099名讲希腊语的参与者收集的数据，我们发现，在维持亲密关系方面遇到更大困难的个体更有可能处于恋爱空窗期单身或自愿单身，而不是处于恋爱关系中。具体对于女性而言，在这一维度上得分较高也意味着处于恋爱关系而非非自愿单身的可能性更大。此外，我们发现，对于男性来说，维持亲密关系的困难与恋爱状况之间的关联是线性的——这两个变量之间的关系可以描绘成一条直线——而对于女性来说则是曲线的——这种关系可以描绘成倒U形曲线。
