While society often assumes that finding a romantic partner is the ultimate key to happiness, tracking relationship changes over time reveals a distinctly different reality. A massive longitudinal study proves that individuals actually experience higher emotional well-being when they are single compared to when they are enduring a poor- or moderate-quality relationship. Ultimately, while a high-quality partnership does boost overall happiness, the data confirms that settling for an unfulfilling romance takes a far heavier psychological toll than simply embracing singlehood.
A newly published study, led jointly by Dr Menelaos Apostolou of the University of Nicosia and Prof Elyakim Kislev of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, provides scientific backing to a well-known piece of life advice: it is emotionally better to be single than to remain in a bad relationship.
Published in the 2026 edition of the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the longitudinal study set out to test the hypothesis that relationship status constitutes a significant predictor of emotional well-being. To uncover these insights, the research duo analyzed data from thirteen waves of the Pairfam study, tracking a representative sample of 12,000 German participants.
The True Cost of a Bad Romance
While baseline findings indicated that participants’ emotional well-being was significantly higher during waves in which they were in an intimate relationship compared to waves in which they were single, Apostolou and Kislev discovered that the quality of the relationship is the ultimate deciding factor.
“What makes this study unique is that we followed participants over several years to see how their happiness shifted as their relationship status changed,” explains Prof Elyakim Kislev. “The results clearly indicate that it isn’t simply about being coupled up. The quality of the relationship is the deciding factor for our emotional health. If a relationship is poor or even just moderate in quality, an individual’s life satisfaction and positive emotions are significantly lower than if they had just stayed single.”
The psychological toll of an unhappy partnership was measurable across several metrics:
- Participants’ emotional well-being was higher when they were single than when they were in a poor- or moderate-quality intimate relationship.
- In waves participants were in a poor or moderate-quality relationship, they experienced fewer positive emotions and lower life satisfaction than when they were single.
- Conversely, participants experienced higher emotional well-being when in a good-quality intimate relationship than when they were single or in a poor- or moderate-quality relationship.
The Gender Divide in Singlehood
The research also uncovered nuanced differences in how men and women process relationship status. The study noted that singlehood was associated with more negative emotions for men than for women, though the observed difference was small. Single women, however, reported feeling less secure than single men.
Ultimately, the findings make a strong case that changes in relationship status, including changes in relationship quality, lead to changes in emotional well-being. For those debating whether to stay in a stagnant or unhappy union, the science points to a clear conclusion: individuals who transition into a good-quality intimate relationship experience the highest levels of well-being, whereas those who enter a poor or moderate-quality relationship experience the lowest.
The research paper titled “Do relationship changes cause changes in emotional well-being? A longitudinal investigation” is now available in Personality and Individual Differences and can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2026.113670.
Researchers:
Menelaos Apostolou, Elyakim Kislev
Institutions:
- University of Nicosia, Department of Social Sciences
- The Federmann School of Public Policy and Governance, Hebrew University