Singles who enter dating primarily to prove their own worth make significantly less progress toward finding a relationship than those who date out of genuine desire for connection, according to a six-month study of 4,019 single adults published in Social Psychological and Personality Science and available via Sage Journals. Researchers led by Laura Hawkins at the University of Toronto tracked participants’ motivations at the start of the study and their self-reported progress toward relationship goals six months later, when 3,176 of the original group completed a follow-up. The pattern that emerged was consistent: wanting a relationship to feel validated backfired, while wanting one for its own sake tended to succeed.
Two Very Different Reasons to Want a Relationship
The study drew a distinction between what psychologists call connection-seeking motivation, wanting a relationship because intimacy, companionship, and partnership feel genuinely appealing, and validation-seeking motivation, wanting a relationship because it would prove something about your own desirability or worth. On paper, both groups wanted the same outcome. In practice, they were pursuing entirely different goals. Connection-seekers tended to set goals around emotional intimacy and building something durable. Validation-seekers gravitated toward goals about being seen as attractive or confident, treating the relationship less as a destination and more as evidence of their own value.
Wanting to Be Chosen Undermines the Chase
The paradox at the center of the study is that validation-seekers, despite pursuing what should have been the easier target, entering into dating rather than building depth, still made less overall progress than connection-seekers. Researchers describe this group as prioritizing “relational entry over relational quality,” essentially optimizing for getting into any relationship rather than a good one. That priority appears to leak into how these daters actually show up. Someone dating to feel chosen often carries a low-grade anxiety about being rejected into every interaction, monitoring how they’re being perceived instead of paying attention to the person across the table. Prospective partners tend to register that undercurrent even when they can’t name it, and pull back accordingly.
Why Connection-Seekers Pulled Ahead
Connection-seekers weren’t just happier while dating. They achieved measurably better outcomes over the six-month window, with higher odds of setting and reaching goals centered on emotional intimacy and building a healthy partnership. The likely mechanism isn’t complicated: someone dating because they’re curious about another person, rather than dating to resolve something about their own self-worth, tends to ask better questions, listen more attentively, and tolerate the ordinary awkwardness of getting to know someone without treating each stumble as proof they’re unworthy. That version of dating reads as lower-pressure to a prospective partner, which in turn makes people more willing to invest further.
None of this means validation-seekers are dating in bad faith or don’t genuinely want partnership. Across the sample, average progress toward stated relationship goals landed around 42%, meaning plenty of people in both groups struggled. But the gap between the two motivations was consistent enough that the researchers treat it as a real predictor, not statistical noise, of who ends up further along after six months of trying.
The Fix Isn’t Confidence, It’s the Question You’re Asking
The practical takeaway isn’t the familiar advice to “just be more confident” before a first date, which puts the focus right back on self-image. It’s a shift in the underlying question a person brings to dating in the first place. Someone who walks in asking “does this person like me enough” is playing an entirely different game than someone asking “do I actually like this person,” even if both show up to the same coffee shop wearing the same outfit. The data suggests that second question, oriented outward rather than inward, is the one more likely to end in an actual relationship.
That reframing matters most in the moments dating tends to feel worst: after a match goes quiet, after a date that didn’t lead anywhere, after another week without much to show for the effort. A validation-seeking mindset treats each of those moments as fresh evidence about personal worth, which makes the whole process feel more exhausting than it needs to be. A connection-seeking mindset treats the same moments as information about fit, nothing more permanent than that. Six months of data suggests the second interpretation isn’t just kinder to sit with. It’s also the one that’s more likely to actually work.
