Browsing by Subject "Breakup"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Meet the parents (and friends) : examining the association between social network introductions and romantic relationship state and fate
(2014-12) Wright, Brittany Lauren, 1985-; Loving, Timothy J.
Part of the natural progression of any romantic relationship is that, over time, individuals will meet and form connections with each other’s friends and family (Milardo, 1982). Interestingly, the examination of social network introductions has largely been neglected by researchers. We do not know when couple members introduce each other to their friends and parents. We also do not know what effect, if any, these network introductions have on future relationship outcomes. The present study addressed these gaps. Specifically, I examined when couple members typically met each other’s friends and parents for the first time, whether relationship quality influenced the likelihood of making these introductions, and whether these introductions predicted later relationship outcomes (i.e., relationship quality, likelihood of breakup, and post-breakup adjustment). In the present study, participants in new romantic relationships (less than 6 months duration) completed a survey every two weeks for nine months. In each survey, participants indicated whether friend and family introductions had occurred, their current relationship quality, and whether they had broken up with their partners since the previous survey. If individuals reported having broken up, they were asked about their reactions to the breakup. Results revealed that friends were typically introduced before parents, and that relationship quality predicted the likelihood of newly dating individuals introducing their parents (but not friends) to their romantic partners. Largely, network introductions failed to predict later perceptions of relationship quality but did influence the likelihood of relationship dissolution over the course of the study. Furthermore, introductions to participants’ mothers predicted worse emotional reactions to a breakup, and introductions to participants’ fathers and best friends were associated with greater relationship longing. The results of this study represent an important first step in understanding when individuals introduce their romantic partners to their friends and family and how these introductions influence relationship development.
New daters’ acute physiological responses to a standardized stressor : do nonadaptive hormone responses forecast romantic breakups?
(2016-05) Graham, Jamie Lee; Gleason, Marci Elizabeth Joy; Loving, Timothy J.; Neff, Lisa A
The quality and longevity of any romantic relationship depends in large part on the manner in which individuals respond to stressful situations (Karney & Bradbury, 1995). Research on the link between stress and relationship outcomes has focused almost exclusively on marital relationships. With this in mind, the current study explored associations between general stress responses (i.e., reactivity and recovery) to a psychosocial stressor and nonmarital breakup status. Data were collected as part of a larger 9-month longitudinal study investigating the mental and physical health outcomes associated with relationship transitions (e.g., breakups). Participants underwent a standardized stress protocol (i.e., The Trier Social Stress Test; Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Hellhammer, 1993) that incorporates motivated performance tasks, uncontrollability, and social-evaluative threat—all of which are key components to reliably eliciting a stress response (Dickerson & Kemeny, 2004). Physiological reactivity and recovery were assessed using samples of salivary cortisol, a stress hormone of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis—one of the body’s primary stress response systems. Results from multilevel modeling indicated that cortisol trajectories among those whose relationships persisted versus those whose relationships ended were not significantly different from one another. Additionally, individuals who displayed nonadaptive hormone responses to a novel setting and a standardized stressor (i.e., took longer to recover, demonstrated greater increases in total cortisol output) were no more likely to report experiencing a breakup than were individuals who displayed adaptive responses to the same settings. Findings are discussed with regard to identifying factors that may be related to patterns of physiological function and nonmarital relationship outcomes.
Relationship deterioration : description and implications
(2012-05) Langlais, Michael Roger; Surra, Catherine A.; Anderson, Edward Robert; Gleason, Marci E.
Ending a relationship is a common and often difficult experience for adolescents and young adults who are dating (Furman & Wehner, 1997). Yet, little is known about how romantic relationships deteriorate prior to breakup (Carver, Joyner, & Udry, 2003; Duck, 1981). The main goal of this study is to develop a definition of relationship deterioration that delineates the process of deterioration, by specifying a beginning and end point of deterioration and identifying characteristics that distinguish deterioration from breakup. Data for this study comes from the University of Texas Tracing Relationships and Commitment study (UT-TRAC), which contains 464 participants (232 heterosexual couples) who graphed changes in commitment over a 9-month period providing reasons describing each change. Deterioration, as defined as declines in commitment, was described by both partners in a romantic dyad in 90 couples whereas 75 individuals described deterioration and their romantic partner did not. A coding manual was created and pilot-tested to measure frequency and intensity of the four characteristics of deterioration in participant’s descriptions of changes in commitment. The current investigation used multi-level modeling separately for couples experiencing deterioration (to control for the dyadic nature of the data) and individuals whose partner did not report declines in commitment. Survival analyses using logistic regressions (Singer & Willett, 2003) were applied to measure how the characteristics of deterioration could predict breakup. Results of the analyses revealed that participants who experienced a breakup were more likely to report relationship deterioration, particularly for couples where both individuals described deterioration. Hierarchical linear models revealed that more frequent amounts of the deterioration characteristics was associated with deterioration as compared to pre-deterioration. However, intensity of the characteristics was not significant in differentiating between deterioration and pre-deterioration. In comparing deterioration with breakup, frequency of the deterioration characteristics predicted breakup only in descriptions of alternative partners, whereas intensity of the all four deterioration characteristics predicted breakup ranging from 37% (more intense scores of relational uncertainty) to 74% (more intense scores of alternative partners for an individual’s partner). Implications of this study will be in terms of commitment theory in order to further understand relationship processes.
The temporal course of love : the developmental trajectories of passionate and companionate love and their connections to relationship dissolution
(2013-12) Schoenfeld, Elizabeth Austin; Loving, Timothy J.; Huston, Ted L.
It has long been believed that passionate love wanes over time, whereas companionate love grows stronger with time. Using a sample of individuals in dating relationships who reported on their feelings of love for their partners up to 20 times over the course of several months, I tested whether passionate love and companionate love develop across the early months of romantic involvement in a manner consistent with theory. Additionally, I investigated whether certain developmental trajectories of both varieties of love are more predictive of relationship dissolution than others. To do this, I first examined the average trajectories of passionate and companionate love for those who stayed together with their partners and those who experienced a breakup, paying special attention to extraneous factors that were expected to influence the manner in which both varieties of love changed over time. The amount of time individuals knew their partners prior to becoming romantically involved, their feelings of the opposing variety of love, the extent to which individuals wanted to break up with their partners, their perceptions of their partners’ desire to break up, and gender all informed the ways in which love changed over time. Because it was expected that passionate love and companionate love would show substantial heterogeneity in their temporal trajectories, I then identified the prototypical patterns of development for passionate and companionate love. The results for passionate love revealed eight distinct linear trajectories, and six unique linear trajectories were identified for companionate love. For passionate love, individuals who experienced stable or declining levels of love were more likely to experience a breakup, but the connection between companionate love and relationship dissolution was less straightforward. Perhaps most importantly, passionate and companionate love interacted to predict the likelihood of dissolution, such that, to the extent that individuals who reported higher levels of passionate love also reported stronger feelings of companionate love, the lower their odds of dissolution. The current findings both complement and extend prior theoretical and empirical work on the developmental trajectories of passionate and companionate love and their connections to relationship dissolution.