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Shared Social and Emotional Activities Within Adolescent Romantic and Non-Romantic Sexual Relationships

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Abstract

Typically, “non-romantic” sexual relationships are assumed to be casual; however, the emotional and social distinctions between romantic and non-romantic contexts are not well understood, particularly in adolescence. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) was used to compare shared emotional (e.g., telling partner that they love her/him) and social (e.g., going out in a group) activities within romantic and non-romantic sexual relationships. Adolescents who reported exclusively romantic sexual relationships (n = 1,891) shared more emotional, but not social, activities with their partners than adolescents who were in non-romantic sexual relationships (n = 315; small effect size, r = .07–.13), akin to adolescents who experienced both relationship types (n = 519; small-to-medium effect size, r = .18–.38). Girls shared more emotional and social activities with their partners than boys when in romantic relationships (small effect size, r = .06–.10); there were no significant gender differences within non-romantic sexual relationships. Findings suggest that gendered scripts remain for sexual relationships that are romantic but not for those that are non-romantic. Notably, for the majority of adolescents, non-romantic relationships still held many emotional and social dimensions typical of romantic relationships and differences between relationship types were small. Although non-romantic relationships were less intimate than romantic sexual relationships, there was remarkable heterogeneity within this relationship type. Caution is advised when working with adolescents engaged in “casual” sexual relationships. Understanding the complexity of adolescent sexual relationships is critical for the advancement of effective sex education programming.

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Acknowledgments

This research used data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due to Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Anyone interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524 (www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth/contract.html). This study was supported, in part, by a William T. Grant Foundation Scholar Award to Stephen T. Russell.

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  1. School of Social Work, Arizona State University, 411 N. Central Ave., Suite 800, Phoenix, AZ, 85004-0689, USA

    Lela Rankin Williams

  2. Department of Family Studies and Human Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Stephen T. Russell

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  1. Lela Rankin Williams
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Correspondence to Lela Rankin Williams.

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Williams, L.R., Russell, S.T. Shared Social and Emotional Activities Within Adolescent Romantic and Non-Romantic Sexual Relationships. Arch Sex Behav 42, 649–658 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-012-0043-3

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