One thing I love about Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace is the look of love on his face throughout the movie.
You can see it in so many scenes, but one that especially sticks in my mind is him in that damn sweater vest at the party, looking absolutely besotted as he watches Stratt sing. Watches her open up.
And of course that scene specifically does have to do with the special bond between Stratt and Grace (platonic or romantic or something completely different, take your pick), but I think it also is just a facet of something so crucial to Grace’s character.
Ryland Grace is besotted with earth, and he is besotted with life. He enjoys living and experiencing life so very completely, and you can see it plain as day not just at the party, not just at Tau Ceti, but also in the classroom (engaging his students), in awkward super-classified meetings (cracking jokes), in Home Depot (turning shopping into a game), and so on. He finds ways to enjoy and experience love and happiness in every aspect of his life, especially before he left (was stolen from) earth.
And I think to me that’s what makes what Stratt did to him all the more devastating. Because she does justify it in some way by pointing out that he doesn’t have people, the subtext being that he doesn’t have love in his life to stay for. But he does; he might not have a family or a romantic partner or even a pet, but he lived a life that was so incredibly filled with love, and that just went unappreciated and unrecognized by Stratt.
He had love, and he was taken from it. And nobody bothered to really acknowledge the real sacrifice he was making, was being forced to make, because they just didn’t recognize that love for what it was. 
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