Does emotional availability matter in dating?
Emotional stability and emotional availability are consistently among the top traits women rate as important in a long-term male partner, and their absence is a strong relationship dealbreaker. In a conjoint-analysis study (n=181), emotional accessibility outweighed sexual accessibility overall (58.1 vs 41.9 importance), and the gap was much larger for women (61.4 vs 38.6) than men (~50/50), with emotional inaccessibility being a leading driver of mate expulsion/wanting to break up. Mate-preference research (Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, n=288) finds women weight emotional stability, intelligence, conscientiousness, and earning potential more heavily than men do for long-term mating. Separately, cross-cultural data (Human Nature, 2023; 17,254 single women in 147 countries) finds kindness-supportiveness is the single highest-rated long-term partner preference across ages, ranking above education-intelligence, financial security, and physical attractiveness. The effect is most pronounced for long-term/serious contexts and weaker for purely short-term attraction.
Evidence & sources
- Frontiers in Psychology (2018) — conjoint analysis, n=181
Confirmed: emotional accessibility outweighed sexual accessibility overall (58.05 vs 41.95); women weighted it far more (61.36 vs 38.64) while men were ~50/50; emotional inaccessibility more likely to produce mate expulsion.
- PsyPost / Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences (Furnham & Cuppello, n=288)
Confirmed: women placed higher value on emotional stability, intelligence, conscientiousness and earning potential in mates than men did; men rated physical attractiveness/health higher.
- Human Nature (Botzet et al., 2023) — 17,254 single women, 147 countries
Confirmed via open-access PMC mirror (PMC10739319): kindness-supportiveness was the top-rated long-term preference (mean 5.41), above education-intelligence (4.93), confidence-assertiveness (4.50), financial security (4.41) and attractiveness (3.96). Note: study is primarily about age effects on preferences and does not measure 'emotional stability.'