What makes them last? Predicting time to relationship dissolution in adolescent women’s intimate relationships with male partners

Abstract

Adolescents acquire important intimacy and communication skills in their relationships that contribute to relationship longevity. Yet we know relatively little about which factors help relationships endure. Objective: This study tracked adolescent women’s ( N = 387; 14–17 years) relationships from onset to dissolution to assess factors that contribute to relationship length. Prior relationship experience, relationship characteristics, and current relationship behaviors were assessed as contributors. Method: A sample of 387 female adolescents (89% African American) were recruited from three primary care adolescent health clinics serving lower- to middle-income families in a large Midwestern city. All were interviewed every 3 months about ongoing relationships. The main outcome measure was time to dissolution. Results: The average relationship lasted 5.87 months ( SD = 11.76). Greater numbers and more time spent in prior relationships were associated with longer duration of the current relationship. Being older, having more status changes during the relationship (promotions and demotions), and reporting greater relationship quality, sexual communication, and sexual autonomy were associated with significantly longer time to breakup. Conclusions: Research to date has not tracked specific relationship timelines. In line with a developmental tasks perspective, this study provides new insights into the value of adolescent women’s past relationship experiences, measures of aging and accrued experience, as well as current relationship characteristics and behaviors to the development of relationship maintenance skills. These findings have educational and clinical implications as they inform programming initiatives designed to help young people establish healthy, consensual intimate relationships.

Variation in emotion dynamics over time is associated with future relationship outcomes

“…Secondly, our model treated the dyad as a closed system, such that there were no external inputs or variables other than the mean and variation of the dynamic parameters that related to the outcomes of interest. However, research has shown that there are a variety of socio-demographic factors that could contribute to relationship quality and relationship dissolution, which may not affect the average value or variation of the dynamic parameters (Conger et al, 1990 ; Gottman and Levenson, 1992 ; Lewin, 2005 ; Poortman, 2005 ; Røsand et al, 2014 ; Hensel and O'Sulliban, 2022 ). Finally, and more generally, there was a 1-to-2-year gap between the assessment of daily affect, and the follow-up with assessment of relationship outcomes.…”