Abstract
Numerous studies have shown that being able to resolve and recover from conflicts is of key importance for relationship satisfaction and stability in adults. Less is known about the importance of these relationship dynamics in adolescent romantic relationships. Therefore, this study investigated whether conflict resolution and recovery predict breakups in middle adolescent couples. Couples who are able to resolve and recover from conflict were expected to demonstrate a lower probability of breaking up. In total, 80 adolescent couples (M age = 15.48, SD = 1.16) participated in a 4-wave prospective questionnaire and observational study, with one year between measurements. In addition to self-report measures, adolescents were observed in real-time during conflicts with their partners. Multilevel Proportional Hazard analyses revealed that, contrary to the hypothesis, conflict resolution and conflict recovery did not predict the likelihood of breakup. Survival differences were not attributable to conflict resolution or conflict recovery. More research is needed to consider the unique relationship factors of adolescent romantic relationships to determine why some relationships survive while others do not.
Highlights
Conflict and disagreements are at the heart of romantic relationships
We investigate whether conflict resolution and recovery predict break-up of relationships in middle adolescent couples
Does Conflict Recovery Predict Breakups? we investigated whether the likelihood of breaking up depended on conflict recovery
Summary
Conflict and disagreements are at the heart of romantic relationships. How couples approach conflicts and especially how well partners are able to resolve conflicts affects relationship functioning and relationship stability [1]. As a result of these findings, a variety of marital therapies have been developed with a common focus on increasing couples’ ability to approach and resolve conflicts constructively [6,7,8,9]. Given this knowledge, the relative paucity of research on conflicts in adolescents’ romantic relationships is surprising [10,11]. The relative paucity of research on conflicts in adolescents’ romantic relationships is surprising [10,11] These early romantic relationships are thought to form a crucial social–emotional basis that underlies partner relationship quality later in life [12,13]. Research on adolescents’ romantic relationships has increased, possibly because of the recognition that teenage romantic relationships are not trivial flings, but rather affect adolescents’ mental health [14]
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