Poster #234 - Learning to Love? The Role of First Romantic Relationships for Subsequent Partnerships

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

Developmental research suggests that adolescents profit from earlier romantic experiences for later relationships (e.g., Shulman & Connolly, 2013) in terms of acquisition and refinement of competencies needed in long-term, successful partnership relations. With increasing age, romantic relationships not only become more intimate, and less short-term, but also seem to play a key role in adolescent functioning and development. So far, however, only few studies have addressed the impact of first relationship experiences on subsequent partnerships (cf. Collins & van Dulmen, 2006; Furman & Collibee, 2016). While these findings point to considerable continuity of romantic experiences across partners, longitudinal evidence on the impact of first romantic relationships on subsequent partner relationships is still limited. The present study focuses on how first romantic experiences shape subsequent partnerships in late adolescence and young adulthood.
Our analyses are based on longitudinal data from the first eight waves of the German Family Panel pairfam and include a subsample of N=965 adolescents with at least two relationships across time for which concurrent reports on relationship quality was available. For a better comparison, we chose information on quality from the assessment in the first year of the respective relationship. Adolescents’ mean age at the first partnership assessed here was 17.0 years (SD = 1,4), while mean age at their second relationship was 19.7 years (SD = 2.0). The adolescents and young adults provided information regarding the developmental timing and the quality of both relationships (e.g. relatedness, autonomy, relationship satisfaction; commitment, emotional insecurity, conflict behavior) during standardized computer-assisted personal interviews.
As expected, some evidence points to stability of relationship quality across partners. In line with theory, stability was found in emotional insecurity and in the level of own destructive conflict behavior as well as in features of the respective partners’ behavior (e.g., partner’s destructive behavior). However, as evidenced by many low correlations of romantic quality across relationships, first and subsequent relationships proved far from similar. Even when group means were similar for first and later relationships there could be little or no correspondence in both partnerships (e.g. for men’s engulfment anxiety). Some of the discontinuities may be due to (differential) learning effects. For example, young people reported significantly higher autonomy in their later relationships. These findings may suggest that young people strive for a better balance of autonomy and relatedness when starting a new relationship. Interestingly, although perceived competence in the relationship increased, young people reported less constructive conflict behavior in their later relationship. Comparisons with relationship development within stable relationships will shed further light at learning processes in romantic development.

Authors

• Sabine Walper, German Youth Institute
  Presenting Author

• Ulrike Lux, German Youth Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Henriette Greischel, Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich
  Non-Presenting Author