teaching them not to treat relationships as status signifiers or commodities.

Well the problem is that relationships aren't status signifiers. They are status, in the most concrete way possible.

Edit: Like it's an old truism, that certain kinds of guys will deliberately pursue making money more than actually trying to build their social skills directly because it can open more doors for you socially & "romantically".

Edit 2: What I'm getting at here is that "status" is an inherently social concept. It has to do with the people who you interact with on a day-to-day basis, & what you can expect from your interactions with them. In this sense, yes, somebody who doesn't have a lot of friends or any romantic partners, is objectively socially inferior to somebody who does. They are, by definition, valued less by the the people around them & are less socially integrated, as a consequence of that. And that itself will usually be the consequence of the person in question possessing some quality that is considered inferior by the society they live in.

The whole issue I think is something that just isn't really well addressed by any contemporary discussion on the matter, I think.