Do women have a better sense of when a relationship will end? A new study suggests it’s not so simple. While women’s commitment levels are a stronger predictor of relationship dissolution in mixed-gender couples, men’s and women’s evaluations of love and satisfaction are equally important. The new findings have been published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
Women are often thought to notice problems earlier, initiate relationship-focused discussions, and take concrete steps toward separation or therapy when issues arise. This belief is supported by evidence showing that women are more likely to end relationships and initiate divorce.
From a theoretical standpoint, both social and evolutionary perspectives suggest why women’s relationship views might carry more predictive power. Social psychological theories propose that societal norms assign women greater responsibility for maintaining relationships, making them more attuned to recognizing when a relationship is failing. Evolutionary theories argue that women, due to their greater biological investment in reproduction, are more motivated to ensure their relationships align with long-term goals, which could make them more sensitive to relational challenges.
Despite these theories, recent research highlights similarities between men and women in many psychological domains, including relationship functioning. Some studies have found no significant gender differences in predicting outcomes like satisfaction or stability, raising the question of whether women’s role as “relationship experts” has been overstated.
“There is a common belief in the scholarly community and more broadly in the culture that women are the experts or ‘barometers’ of relationships, such that their views about the relationship are more diagnostic of what will happen in the future for the relationship than men’s views,” said study author Matthew D. Johnson, a professor of family science in the Department of Human Ecology at the University of Alberta.
“Despite widespread belief, the evidence supporting this notion was surprisingly weak and inconsistent. I wanted to dig in with really great data and rigorous methods to tease out the extent to which women’s direct forecasts about whether the relationship will end or not, commitment, relationship satisfaction, and love for their partner would be more predictive of whether the couple broke up or not up to four years later than men’s reports on these same constructs.”
To investigate this question, the researchers used data from the Relationship Development Study, a longitudinal project examining the dynamics of mixed-gender, unmarried couples in the United States. The sample included 314 couples who had been together for an average of 3.2 years at the study’s start. Approximately 42% of the couples were cohabiting, and 30% were raising children, reflecting a mix of serious, long-term partnerships that had not yet transitioned to marriage.
Participants completed surveys assessing four key aspects of their relationships: perceived likelihood of breaking up, commitment, satisfaction, and love. For instance, participants rated how likely they thought it was that they would break up in the next year, how committed they were to their relationship, their overall happiness in the relationship, and the strength of their love for their partner. These measures captured participants’ thoughts about their relationship functioning and its potential future.
The study followed couples over four years, with participants completing follow-up surveys at regular intervals. During each wave, participants reported whether they were still in the same relationship, allowing the researchers to track relationship dissolution and link it back to earlier perceptions and evaluations reported by each partner.
The findings revealed that women’s reports of certain relationship factors were more predictive of breakups than men’s, particularly over longer timeframes. Women’s commitment emerged as a stronger predictor of breakup across two, three, and four years, though not at one year. This suggests that women’s lower commitment is especially indicative of future breakups as relationships progress.
Women’s perceived likelihood of breaking up was a stronger predictor of relationship dissolution at the two-year mark than men’s perceptions, but this difference disappeared at one-, three-, and four-year intervals. For relationship satisfaction and love, both men’s and women’s reports predicted breakup risk, but there were no significant gender differences in their predictive strength across any time intervals.
“Women’s commitment was a consistently stronger predictor of future breakup than men’s commitment, but there were no robust differences when it came to women’s and men’s direct predictions about whether the relationship would last, how satisfied they were with the relationship, or how much they loved their partner,” Johnson told PsyPost. “These findings suggest women’s commitment, which reflects the motivation to continue a partnership, may be uniquely predictive of future dissolution, but men and women may be equally diagnostic on other relationship perceptions, including direct predictions about breaking up.”
Summarizing the key takeaway, Johnson advised: “Pay particular attention to women’s commitment, but men’s and women’s views about other aspects of the relationship are equally important predictors of whether the partnership will last or not.”
“There really is something unique about commitment in this context, which is unique because many scholars conceptualize commitment as one facet of relationship quality along with satisfaction and love. I think these data provide empirical evidence that commitment is different in important ways, particularly for women: it is a potent indicator of relationship continuance or dissolution, at least among unmarried couples.”
Although the study provides valuable insights, there are limitations to consider. It focused exclusively on mixed-gender, unmarried couples in the United States, so the findings may not generalize to married couples, same-gender relationships, or couples in other cultural contexts.
Additionally, the data were collected between 2008 and 2012, and societal norms around relationships may have shifted since then. “Examining this question with more recent data is important,” Johnson said.
Future research could explore whether these patterns hold in more diverse samples. Investigating how modern relationship dynamics, such as “ghosting,” influence the role of gender in relationship dissolution could provide further insight.
“This is really part two of a broader interest I had in scientifically testing the idea that women are unique relationship barometers,” Johnson explained. “The first study examined whether women’s satisfaction was a stronger predictor of their own and their partner’s future satisfaction compared to men’s satisfaction (spoiler – it wasn’t; equal effects between men and women). The two main outcomes relationship science aims to predict is relationship satisfaction and stability.”
“So I wanted to follow up the first study with one predicting dissolution. Now that I’ve done that, I’m pretty satisfied that I’ve addressed this broader question (are women unique relationship experts) in the best way I can, and I’m happy for others to build on this work—replicating or disconfirming the findings.”
“I found it really interesting in this line of research to trace the development of ‘accepted wisdom,’” Johnson added. “By digging out the first occurrence of the barometer metaphor, I saw the very narrow way in which it was originally invoked and then the gradual widening of it to this vague notion of women as all-encompassing relationship sages. Fortunately, science is self-correcting; it’s baked into the recipe. There will always be someone who comes along and says: ‘I wonder about that…’”
The study, “Gender differences—or the lack thereof—in the prediction of relationship dissolution among unmarried mixed-gender couples from the United States,” was authored by Matthew D. Johnson, Justin A. Lavner, Scott M. Stanley, and Galena K. Rhoades.
