Do Crushes Hurt Your Relationship? What the Science Actually Says

Sunday, November 23, 2025. This is for Joy.

If you search “does having a crush mean my relationship is over?,” you get a digital avalanche of panic.

Partners write as if noticing another human being automatically voids their mortgage.

But the question is worth asking because most couples have no idea what a crush inside a committed relationship actually means—or doesn’t mean.

A new study in the academic journal Personal Relationships by Lucia O’Sullivan and colleagues finally gives us data instead of hand-wringing.

The researchers followed real couples for a year to see whether crushes (or, in research language, extradyadic attraction) actually reduce relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, or commitment.

Here’s the unglamorous truth:
Most crushes do absolutely nothing.
A few crushes correlate with trouble.
And the difference depends almost entirely on the relationship you’re already in.

If you came here for a scandal, I’m sorry. You’ll need to look elsewhere.

Crushes Are Normal. Relationship Decline Is Not

Let’s start with the part everyone likes to forget: attraction to people outside your relationship is not a sign of moral collapse. It’s biology.

It’s visual attention. Helen Fisher’s work on romantic neurochemistry has been telling us this since flip phones were a thing.

David Buss documented it cross-culturally. Even John Gottman—who treats emotional attunement like a sacred discipline—acknowledges that noticing other people is part of being alive.

If your heart does a polite, tiny somersault when someone attractive steps into the elevator, congratulations: your nervous system is functioning.

The O’Sullivan study confirms what seasoned therapists already know: a crush is not a crisis.

It’s a moment. It’s weather. And for most people, it does not decrease relationship satisfaction.

Unless, of course, the relationship is already on thin ice.

The Two Kinds of People Who Get Crushes in Relationships

The researchers uncovered something clinically useful: not all crushes operate the same way, and not all people who have them are performing the same emotional choreography.

1. The One-Crush Loyalist

This person has one crush throughout the entire year.
Low intensity. Often fades.
The crush is basically a screensaver—nice to look at, not something you interact with.

This type maps onto people who tend to be satisfied in their relationship and have stable attachment patterns. No crisis lurking here.

2. The Rotating Crush Collector

New crush today, new crush next season.
Higher attraction intensity. Sometimes increasing.

This is the person who experiences outside attraction like a subscription box—fresh items delivered regularly. Unsurprisingly, they also report lower sexual satisfaction, lower romantic satisfaction, and more relational drift.

This isn’t about the crush. It’s about the internal restlessness the crush reveals.

For clarity: when people develop repeated crushes outside the relationship, relationship satisfaction tends to drop, not because the crushes are powerful, but because the relationship is already underfed.

When a Crush Actually Signals Relationship Trouble

The O’Sullivan team used measures of sexual satisfaction (GMSEX), romantic satisfaction (Couples Satisfaction Index), and commitment (Investment Model Scale). And they found the same pattern every time:

• High-Satisfaction Couples: crushes don’t matter

• Low-Satisfaction Couples: crushes correlate with decreases in satisfaction

• Idealizing Couples: small but surprising dips (the “everything was perfect until it wasn’t” crowd)

This aligns beautifully with Rusbult’s Investment Model. Satisfaction, investment, and perceived alternatives—not short-lived attractions—predict commitment and stability.

In other words:
A crush doesn’t break your relationship.
A struggling relationship misinterprets the crush.

Why Some People Spiral Over a Crush (and Others Don’t)

Attachment research by Gail Birnbaum helps explain the psychological divide:

• Anxiously Attached Partners turn a crush into a catastrophe. Noticing someone else feels like a betrayal, even if it lasts two seconds.

• Avoidantly Attached Partners treat crushes like aromatherapy—momentary relief from emotional pressure.

• Secure Partners understand the difference between noticing someone and wanting to reorganize their entire lives around them.

When partners ask, “Why does this crush feel so intense?”, the answer is almost always:
Because your relationship is stressed, not because this person is the love of your life.

This is why therapists don’t panic when clients mention outside attraction. We’re listening for the context, not the confession.

How Crushes Show Up in Couples Therapy

When a client tells me they’re attracted to someone else, I’m not listening for guilt. I’m listening for information.

• Is this the first time or the fifth?
  One crush? Probably fine.
  Rotating attractions? Something’s missing inside the relationship.

• Is the crush being used as stress relief?
  Noticing someone is human.
  Using someone as a mental escape hatch is avoidance.

• Is the relationship already disconnected?
  Most crush-related fear is a late signal, not an early one.

Healthy couples don’t pretend crushes don’t exist.

They talk about boundaries, reconnect sexually, and strengthen intimacy. The crush becomes an opportunity instead of a threat.

This is the opposite of what the Feed recommends, which usually involves surveillance-level vigilance.

The Study’s Weak Spot (And It’s Not Minor)

Two-thirds of participants dropped out before the study ended.

As intriguing as this research may be, a dropout rate this high introduces survivorship bias so large you could host a picnic in it.

The most distressed and impulsive participants probably disappeared before the second round of surveys.

Still, these findings mirror decades of work on desire, commitment, and relationship maintenance—and they also conform with what couples therapists like me see every week.

Final Thoughts

Most people assume a crush is a neon sign announcing the end of their relationship.

It isn’t. It’s usually just a flicker of attention, a quick change in lighting, a momentary reminder that attraction isn’t governed by your calendar or your commitments. The real question is not whether you noticed someone. The real question is what, exactly, you return to when you turn back home.

Healthy relationships survive crushes because there is something to return to: a bond that still feels alive, a partner who still matters, a shared life that still holds shape.

Weak, enervated relationships react differently.

A crush doesn’t destabilize them—it merely reveals the instability that was already there, the part no one wanted to name.

You can treat a crush as guilt, temptation, or proof of doom.
Or you can treat it as a weather report: informative, occasionally inconvenient, rarely catastrophic.

Relationships don’t fall apart because one of you had a moment of human curiosity.
They fall apart because neither of you felt able—or willing—to say what wasn’t working long before the crush ever arrived.

The crush isn’t the beginning of the end.
But it might be the beginning of a conversation you probably should have had already.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Birnbaum, G. E. (2018). A functional perspective on changes in sexual desire across relationship development. Current Opinion in Psychology, 25, 124–129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.04.006

Buss, D. M. (1989). Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00023992

Fisher, H. (2004). Why we love: The nature and chemistry of romantic love. Henry Holt.

Funk, J. L., & Rogge, R. D. (2007). Testing the ruler with item response theory: Increasing precision of measurement for relationship satisfaction. Journal of Family Psychology, 21(4), 572–583. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.21.4.572

Gottman, J. M. (2011). The science of trust: Emotional attunement for couples. W. W. Norton.

Lehmiller, J. J. (2018). Tell me what you want: The science of sexual desire and how it can help you improve your sex life. Da Capo Press.
(Correct publication year: 2018, not 2015.)

O’Sullivan, L. F., Belu, C. F., & Tramonte, L. (2025). Do crushes pose a problem for exclusive relationships? Trajectories of attraction intensity to extradyadic others and links to primary relationship commitment and satisfaction. Personal Relationships, 32(4), e70033. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.70033

Rusbult, C. E. (1980). Commitment and satisfaction in romantic associations: A test of the investment model. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 16(2), 172–186. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(80)90092-2

Rusbult, C. E., & Buunk, B. P. (1993). Commitment processes in close relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 10(2), 175–204. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407593102002

Stanley, S. M., & Markman, H. J. (1992). Assessing commitment in personal relationships. Journal of Marriage and Family, 54(3), 595–608. https://doi.org/10.2307/353245