Women Prefer Men Who Grow Up—And Relationship Science Has Been Whispering This Since the ’80s
Friday, November 21. 2025.
Every now and then evolutionary psychology releases a study that lands with the energy of a friend announcing, “I’ve discovered that hydration is helpful.”
This one—published in Evolutionary Psychological Science—declares that women prefer long-term partners who show “personal growth motivation.”
In plain English:
Women like men who grow.
Women prefer men who don’t emotionally stall out at 23.
Women want partners who are actively assembling themselves, not just coasting on whatever personality they downloaded in high school.
Astonishing.
But here’s the thing: this “new finding” slots so neatly into decades of classic research that you can practically trace the genealogy. It’s like watching a family resemblance travel through the literature.
Growth Motivation: The Academic Term for “She Wants a Grown-Ass Man, Not a Project”
The researchers break growth motivation into two categories:
Experiential growth, which is basically:
“I want a life that means something, not just a highlight reel of bad decisions.”
Reflective growth, the quieter heavyweight:
“I think about my life. I examine patterns. I don’t need to be begged to go to therapy.”
Now compare that to the classics:
David Buss’s big cross-cultural study? Women ranked emotional stability and dependability as top long-term traits.
Gottman? Same deal—relationships collapse when partners can’t self-regulate, repair, or reflect.
McAdams? People who narrate their lives in developmental terms—growth, learning, purpose—are more responsible and committed.
This new research is basically the umbrella term the field didn’t know it needed. Growth is the engine underneath all those older findings.
The Setup: Undergrads Judging Whether Someone Looks Like Trouble
The authors started with a pilot: 66 students reading vignettes of high-growth vs. low-growth humans. The students immediately recognized who was “working on themselves” and who was spiritually phoning it in.
Then came the main study: 508 heterosexual undergrads rating opposite-sex profiles for:
short-term appeal.
long-term appeal.
likelihood of cheating.
These profiles differed by high vs. low growth and by reflective vs. experiential styles.
And then the data rolled in with the subtlety of a marching band.
What They Found (And Why Anyone Over 30 Already Knew)
Women want high-growth men for long-term relationships. Badly.
This is not news. This is the human condition.
And it lines up perfectly with decades of research:
Buss showed women choose men who signal investment, maturity, and reliability.
Sprecher and Regan found that willingness to grow with a partner predicts long-term desirability better than attractiveness.
Attachment Theory tells us reflective people form more secure relationships.
This new study isn’t overturning anything—it’s clarifying what the last forty years have been saying in different dialects.
Experiential growth got the highest marks.
Reflective growth was right behind it.
Both beat the emotional potato-chip men who do not evolve.
Women even preferred reflective growers for short-term fun.
Not by a landslide, but enough to be interesting.
Even when women want “no strings,” they’re still screening for signs of basic maturity.
(Not saintliness—just the absence of chaos.)
Men didn’t seem to care about growth in women.
Again: this is consistent with everything from Buss to anyone who has ever been on a dating app.
Men’s attraction patterns shift later—possibly after one failed relationship, two leases, and a catastrophic holiday with the in-laws—but at nineteen? Maturity isn’t yet a category.
Low-growth = more likely to cheat.
Participants smelled it immediately.
You can practically feel the echoes of earlier research:
Low conscientiousness predicts infidelity.
Poor reflective functioning predicts impulsive relational behavior.
Rusbult’s commitment model shows low self-development = low investment.
Not rocket science: the person who never thinks about their choices is more likely to make bad ones.
Yes, They Were Nineteen. No, That Doesn’t Undercut the Findings.
The sample was Western undergraduates, which is always the part where academics clear their throat and apologize. But this is one of those cases where the consistency across decades of research saves the day.
We’ve seen these patterns:
in 37 cultures
across all adult age groups
in clinical samples
in married couples
and in longitudinal research
Growth isn’t a college trend. It’s an evolutionary strategy.
Why Couples Therapists Care (And Why Couples Fall Apart)
In therapy, “lack of growth” is the villain behind the villain.
Couples don’t come in saying,
“He refuses to grow.”
They say:
“He doesn’t listen.”
“She never reflects.”
“He keeps making the same mistakes.”
“She shuts down when we argue.”
“He doesn’t try.”
“She blames everyone else.”
All of these are symptoms of stagnant development.
Growth—real growth, not aspirational slogans—is the hidden infrastructure of relational stability.
This study simply gives us a cleaner vocabulary for what we see in the room every day.
Why This Study Feels Timely
Right now, dating culture is a buffet of distraction: charisma masquerading as character, novelty posing as identity, curated selves drifting around like gas fumes.
Against that backdrop, women are choosing men who grow.
Who reflect. Who evolve.
Not because it’s romantic. Because it’s functional and adaptive.
Because a relationship is an organism, and one partner refusing to grow is like one lung deciding it’s done for the day. This is not new knowledge.
But it is newly urgent for our unprecedented times..
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Brown, M., Gonzalez, N. J., & Bauer, J. J. (2025). Contextual preferences for growth motivation in mates(doi:10.1007/s40806-025-00449-z). Evolutionary Psychological Science.
Buss, D. M. (1989). Sex differences in human mate preferences (doi:10.1037/0022-3514.57.3.443). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(3), 443–458.
Fonagy, P., Steele, M., Steele, H., Higgitt, A., & Target, M. (1996). The theory and practice of resilience and reflective functioning (doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.1996.tb01300.x). Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 37, 231–257.
Gottman, J. M. (2011). The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples. Retrieved from gottman.com/book/the-science-of-trust.
McAdams, D. P. (1993). The Stories We Live By (doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195362300.001.0001). Oxford University Press.
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2016). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change(doi:10.1017/CBO9781139049180). Guilford Press.
Rusbult, C. E. (1983). A longitudinal test of the investment model (doi:10.1037/0022-3514.45.1.101). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 101–117.
Sprecher, S., & Regan, P. (2002). What partners value: Sex differences and similarities(doi:10.1177/0265407502019001001). Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 19, 227–246.