Emerging Adult LGB+ Romantic Relationships: Narratives about Met and Unmet Relationship Needs

ABSTRACT

Although emerging adulthood is recognized as a pivotal time for relationship development, most studies concern heterosexual youth or older sexual minority partners. Using narratives from 40 college student emerging adults, we sought to understand the particularities and generalities of lesbian, gay, bisexual and other sexual minority (LGB+) relationship experiences. Positive experiences particular to being in a LGB+ relationship concerned partner support for coming and being out; support from family members for the relationship was rarely mentioned. Negative experiences were twice as likely to be mentioned as positive ones. They concerned how partners being at different levels of outness and problems with family support stressed the relationship. Generalities pertaining to positive relationship factors included meeting needs for support and using perspective taking to deal with conflict. Negative factors included unmet needs for companionship and intimacy and breakup anxiety about whether the relationship had a future. Our findings suggest the importance of developing strength-based LGB+ affirmative education for emerging adults to promote core relationship processes and strengthen skills to cope with stressors specific to sexual minority romantic partnerships.

KEYWORDS:

• LGB+ romantic relationships
• narratives
• emerging adults
• coming out
• support
• family stigma
• perspective taking
• relationship needs

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the support of Dr Ashley Borders for this project and contributions of Ralph Betancourt and the other undergraduate students in the TCNJ-Romantic Relationships Research Lab for making this research possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.