We’re becoming more individualistic and it’s affecting our love lives

Individualism – prioritising your own goals over those of the wider community – is on the rise, and according to one of the largest ever studies on love, it is affecting how we feel about our partners. But this may not be a bad thing.

“Being completely in love and dependent [and] intensively thinking about one person may reduce your ability to work or study, etcetera,” says Jaroslava Varella Valentova at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, who wasn’t involved in the study. On the flip side, reducing our focus on our romantic partner could allow us to invest more time and energy into other relationships or hobbies, she says.

Previous research suggests that individualism is increasing around the world. “My opinion is that younger generations [today] are likely to be more self-obsessed [and] more individualistic [than previous generations at the same age],” says Julie Aitken Schermer at Western University in Ontario, Canada, who also wasn’t involved in the latest study.

This can be pointed at globalisation or modern technologies like social media. But when it comes to the consequences of individualism, specifically around romantic love, the research has been mixed. This is probably because the studies were small and focused on just one or two countries, says Marta Kowal at the University of Wrocław, Poland, who presented the new study at the Love, actually and in theory conference in Edinburgh, UK, earlier this month.

She and her colleagues recruited more than 61,000 adults, aged between 18 and 90, from 81 countries, who had been in a romantic relationship for anywhere from weeks to years.

The participants completed online surveys on how intensely they loved their partner. This involved ranking on a scale of 1 to 5 how strongly they agreed with statements such as “I feel a deep emotional bond with this person” and “I am committed to maintaining this relationship”.

They also completed surveys where they indicated, on a scale from 1 to 7, how much they agreed with statements such as “group success is more important than individual success” and “individuals should pursue goals only after considering the welfare of the group”.

Together, the surveys revealed that participants with a more individualistic mindset seem to experience romantic love less strongly, even when accounting for factors such as sex, age and economic background. The researchers found similar results when they replicated the study in a separate group of more than 6000 partnered adults from 50 countries.

Individualism may be making us love less intensely if it affects our ability to connect, says Thomas Curran at The London School of Economics and Political Science. “If you’re constantly worried about you as an individual [and] the way you’re perceived as an individual, you feel a lot more competition because you think everybody’s an individual fighting for scarce resources,” he says. “So, whenever you’re interacting with someone else, you’re thinking, ‘how do I put my best face forward?’.”

This could make it harder for people to be vulnerable, which is a core part of loving intensely, says Curran. “You would find it hard to reveal your whole self to someone else,” he says.

If you find that individualism is negatively affecting the intensity of love you feel, there may be ways to overcome it. For instance, encouraging people to view themselves as a part of a wider community, like through talking therapy, could be effective, says Schermer.

Kowal’s team is planning to explore how the intensity of romantic love we feel affects our well-being by tracking about 2000 partnered people in Poland for one year.