Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Amy J. Amy J. Rauer and Gregory S. The delayed entry into marriage that characterizes modern society raises questions about young adults' romantic relationship trajectories and whether patterns found to characterize adolescent romantic relationships persist into young adulthood.
The current study traced developmental transitions into and out of romantic relationships from age 18 through age 25 in a sample of young adults. The developmental antecedents of these different romantic relationship experiences in both distal and proximal family and peer domains were also examined. Analyses included both person-oriented and variable-oriented approaches.
Findings show 5 distinct clusters varying in timing, duration, and frequency of participation in romantic relationships that range from those who had only recently entered into a romantic relationship to those who had been in the same relationship from age 18 to age These relationship outcome trajectory clusters were predicted by variations in competence in early relationships with family and peers.
Interpersonal experiences in family and peer contexts in early childhood through adolescence thus may form a scaffold on which later competence in romantic relationships develops. Findings shed light on both normative and nonnormative developmental transitions of romantic relationships in young adulthood.
Keywords: romantic relationships, young adulthood, developmental antecedents, family relationships, peer relationships. Though this goal is laudable, researchers face two challenges in trying to operationally define normative romantic development in young adulthood.
