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Social media are central to the creation and maintenance of social relations, including romantic relations. While much of the scholarship has examined how social media play a role in the initiation and maintenance of romantic relations, little is known about their role in romantic dissolution. This chapter fills this gap by examining the kinds of strategies young adults employ to cope with the aftermath of a romantic breakup complicated by Facebook. Based on qualitative analysis of 10 interviews with young adults, the authors propose a typology of Facebook coping strategies for romantic breakups. The typology includes seven types of coping strategies with 12 subtopics and 25 specific actions linked to the subtopics. The authors find that those coping with a breakup engage in erasing and avoiding breakup reminders and digital traces, as they perceive them as hurtful. They regulate their use of Facebook and limit Facebook communication with the ex. An important coping strategy used was to express their emotions via Facebook content, often aimed at the ex-partner. They also use Facebook to seek support and new information about the ex, including about potential new romantic interests. Others preferred to avoid information about the ex and either deleted the ex and their friends or chose to unsubscribe to updates. Coping strategies included preventative measures such as changing passwords, blocking the ex, and adjusting privacy settings. We found our participants engaged in both goal-directed and emotionally based coping strategies. Yet, the findings suggest a tendency to rely more extensively on goal-directed coping strategies by actively addressing the breakup stressor. We also note that coping strategies specific to Facebook are more likely to be used than traditional offline forms of coping. This exploratory study serves as a starting point to better understand the role that Facebook plays in mediating online behaviors following a romantic dissolution, such that these strategies can be subsequently evaluated in terms of usefulness in clinical coping recommendations.

This study aims to examine how loneliness, romantic relationship status (single/non-single) and romantic attachment factors (sociosexual orientation index (SOI), satisfaction with current relationship) interactively affect conspicuous consumption.

Five quasi-experimental studies were conducted with different measures of conspicuous consumption across a variety of samples (N = 1189).

Study 1 shows that loneliness increased singles’ but not non-singles’ conspicuous consumption. Study 2A further shows the mediating role of the mating motive amongst singles. Study 2B compared conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption and showed no interaction effect between loneliness and romantic relationship status in the domain of inconspicuous consumption. Studies 3 and 4 tested whether the effects of loneliness on non-singles’ conspicuous consumption were moderated by SOI and satisfaction with current relationship, respectively. Specifically, lonely non-singles with high SOI or low satisfaction with current relationship sought conspicuous consumption, but those with low SOI or high satisfaction with the current relationship avoided conspicuous consumption.

This study did not specifically consider different roots of loneliness (lack of romantic love, friendship or family attachment) between singles and non-singles, which future research should explore.

The findings have implications for both marketers and policymakers regarding marketing campaigns for conspicuous products, support programmes satisfying the specific social attachment needs of different lonely people, etc.

This study identifies a specific social attachment desire of the lonely, namely, romantic motive, by which loneliness influences singles’ and non-singles’ conspicuous consumption in different ways. The findings suggest the value of distinguishing types of loneliness.

Like many social media trends, the romantic craze charms Egyptian youth. Romantic Facebook crush pages popped up locally in the past few years among university students particularly. They expressed a new aspect of online social interaction that has raised red flags with some adults, while thought to be a new healthy way to pour youth’s hearts out anonymously in a so-called a conservative society for others. Some crush pages, in particular, drew concerns of several parents for they are more vulgar and aggressive submissions. Laying between the two arguments, this study aims to examine the extent to which Facebook users make use of it to pursue romance, if Facebook’s characteristics and social context reflected in users’ perceptions of romantic relationships, the implications of being in a romantic relationship on Facebook and if such FB practices could pose a state of moral panic or a public concern.

A survey of 200 Facebook users between 18 and 25 years was gathered. Furthermore, a content analysis of three Egyptian universities’ “crush pages” posts was applied.

The study highlighted the conflicting ideals of today’s Egyptian youth moral lives. Ultimately, there is an evidence that practices of using Facebook online crush pages have been creating new contested but delightful moral normative rules around love.

Crushes pages have been sweeping across Egyptian colleges and faculties; however, almost no Arabic study was done to figure out its impact. Furthermore, the study takes into account the socio-cultural background of the Egyptian society.

Low-income mothers who use welfare benefits are frequently portrayed as “faces of dependency” in the prevailing public discourse on America’s poor. This discourse, often anchored in race, class, and gender stereotypes, perpetuates the assumption that mothers on welfare lack skills to employ constructive agency in securing family resources. Scholars, however, have suggested that their welfare program use is embedded in complex survival strategies to make ends meet. While such studies emphasize maternal inventiveness in garnering necessary resources and support, this literature devotes little attention to the costs of these strategies on maternal power as well as how mothers negotiate gender and the oppression that usually accompanies such support. Feminist scholars in particular point to the importance of exploring these issues in the contexts of mothers’ romantic unions and client–caseworker relationships. Guided by an interpersonal, institutional, and intersectional framework, the authors explored this issue using longitudinal ethnographic data on 19 Mexican-immigrant, low-income mothers from the Three-City Study. Results showed mothers negotiated gender and power by simultaneously “doing,” “undoing,” and/or “redoing” gender using three strategies that emerged from the data: symbolic reliance, selective reliance, and creative nondisclosure. Implications of these findings for the future research are discussed.

Having good relationships with friends and a trusting romantic partnership are extremely important for members of Generation Z. In social relationships with other young people, they experience solidarity and support with problems and crises, and learn to stand by others. Young people are therefore intensely concerned with how to enter into relationships and their expectations of them. Overwhelmingly, what they are looking for in friendships is similar across cultures – a set of shared values and similar hobbies. For romantic relationships, though, shared values and close proximity are key.

Research illustrates that workplace romance is on the rise and has potentially negative and beneficial consequences. The purpose of this paper is to understand, from an individual manager and employee perspective in the UK and USA, what personal experience individuals had on workplace romance and what this meant to them personally and in terms of company policy.

A thematic analysis approach was taken to understand what experiences individuals had on workplace romance and how this experience should be reflected in company policy. The research utilised qualitative interviews which were preferred over other methods, such as focus groups by the participants. These interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded to formulate themes in the research.

The sample consists of 21 employees and 15 managers from Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania and England. Regardless of whether participants were from the USA or England, their opinions were similar. Managers and entry level employees feel that workplace romance was acceptable if it has minimal impact on the workplace. Managers and entry level employees are most concerned with the negative impacts of workplace romance on the atmosphere of the workplace, more so than the risk of sexual harassment lawsuits. Managers and entry level employees agree on the importance of companies having a policy on how workplace romance will be handled.

Both managers and employees stress that company policy should not place a complete ban on workplace romance; that workplace romances should be handled on a case by case basis.

The paper adds to existing research by comparing managers' and entry level employees' perceptions of consensual romantic relationships between people who work for the same organisation.

Pauline Boss is Professor, Department of Family Social Science, University of Minnesota; and a family therapist in private practice. Her research interests are in the area of family stress, specifically when there is ambiguous loss or boundary ambiguity in families. Her research has included various types of ambiguous loss ranging from loved ones physically missing after war or terrorism, to those psychologically missing due to Alzheimer’s disease or other chronic mental illnesses.Bertram J. Cohler is Professor, the Committee on Human Development, the College, and the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago. His research interests include study of continuity and change across the course of adult lives, the family, narrative and writing the life story, social change and sexual identity, and the study of nostalgia in personal and popular memory.Frank Fincham is a Distinguished Professor and Director of Clinical Training at University at Buffalo. His interests include forgiveness, cognition in relationships, and the impact of interparental conflict on children.Karen Fingerman is Associate Professor and Berner Hanley University Scholar at Purdue University. Her research focuses on positive and negative emotions in relationships. Her work has examined mothers and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren, friends, acquaintances, and peripheral social ties.Elizabeth Hay is a Doctoral Student in Human Development and Family Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. She is interested in intergenerational relationships and how they contribute to health and well-being throughout adulthood.Lori Kaplan is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago, Illinois. Her research focuses on family systems and relationships across the life cycle. She has published articles on child custody arrangements after divorce, chronic illness and its effects on family relationships, and family caregiving to an elder with Alzheimer’s disease.David M. Klein is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His current research interests include intergenerational relations, romantic relationship formation, and the sociology of science with an emphasis on the development of theoretical and methodological perspectives in the family sciences.Frieder R. Lang is Professor of Human Development at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. His research interests are processes and mechanisms of the development of social and family ties over the life course, motivational psychology of human development and successful aging.Frank Lettke is Assistant Professor in the department of History and Sociology at the Universität Konstanz (Germany), Fachbereich Geschichte und Soziologie and directs the Research Center “Family and Society.” He is interested in intergenerational relations and the diversity of family forms. His current research focuses on family relationships in the context of inheritance.Dagmar Lorenz-Meyer is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. Her research interests include institutional and practical arrangements of intergenerational relations, and gender equality in the enlargement process of the European Union.Kurt Lüscher, Ph.D., held a chair in Sociology at the Universität Konstanz (Germany), Fachbereich Geschichte und Soziologie until 2000, where he was also director of the research center on “Society and Family” (he is now professor emeritus). He has longstanding research interests in the family, the life course, and intergenerational relations. He has also worked extensively in the areas of socialization, child and family policy, and the relationship between family and the legal system.Greg Maio is a Reader in Psychology at Cardiff University. His research interests include attitudinal ambivalence, attitude change, relationships, and social values.Francesca Giorgia Paleari is Lecturer at Catholic University of Milano, Italy. Her research interests include family relationships, forgiving, and research methodology.Karl Pillemer is Professor of Human Development at Cornell University, where he also directs the Cornell Gerontology Research Institute. His research interests include the impact of life course transitions on family relationships, the causes and consequences of parent-child relationship quality, and the interaction between families and community institutions.Andrejs Plakans is Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa; and editor of The History of the Family: An International Quarterly (Elsevier). His research interests focus on post-1800 eastern Europe, and include historical demography, rural family structures, and kinship.Camillo Regalia is Professor of Social Psychology at Catholic University of Milano, Italy. His research interests include family relationships, self-efficacy beliefs and forgiving.Harry Segal is Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Psychology and Human Development at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. His research interests include the clinical assessment of narrative, the implicit processes involved in the imagination, computational modeling of early experience, and the cognitive-affective aspects of transition from early to mid-childhood.

The present study explored the demographics and associations between the use of technology and romantic relationships among 171 young adults.

Participants completed a self-administered anonymous, online survey that included 66 questions assessing demographic information, use of technology, sexting activity, and sexual behaviors. Crosstabs were performed between demographic factors and questions assessing online engagement with romantic partners. A chi-square test for independence (with Yates Continuity Correction) was done among the remaining questions on Internet use and demographic variables, with the exception of age. Independent-samples t-tests were conducted to compare age with the questions posed on how technology influences romantic relationships. The authors used Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model and Johnson’s addition of the technosubsystem to examine the influence of the Internet on relationships.

Results showed variation with the Internet’s impact on close relationships by ethnicity; Caucasians were more likely to see the Internet as increasing their relationship while African Americans saw it as negatively impacting it. In addition, men were more likely to use technology to maintain long-distance relationships, as well as search for a partner, flirt, and ask a partner out online.

As relational scientists, it is particularly important to understand if and how interpersonal relationships are affected by the use of technology. Suggestions are provided on how to guide partners toward healthy relationships by managing the impact of technology. Studying the current trends in technology to better understand modern relationships is critical to future social scientists and relationship helpers.

The article is based on a research project using survey data (N=628) and qualitative interviews (N=60) with young people and their parents belonging to the five largest ethnic minority groups in Denmark, along with the experiences of psychosocial services for minority young people. The theoretical framework is social psychological, combining theories of modernisation, family relations and effects of discrimination. The article examines interaction with the parents in relation to their intimate partnership formation and the dynamics of religious endogamy. Main findings are that parents may be either supportive or against the young people, contrary to the dominant discourses about intergenerational conflicts. The continued practice of religious endogamy is another finding. The article criticises the reductionistic dichotomy ‐ either own or parental choice ‐ and appeals for broader concepts which focus both on own choice and parental acceptance. The article also throws light on some strategic services dealing with the problems of ethnic minority young people in forming intimate partnerships in other countries. A model for psychosocial intervention is presented which directs attention to ageism and sexism, as well as racism, at personal, interpersonal and structural levels.

The behavioural changes embraced by the current generation has prompted researchers to revisit the paradigm of human relationships, especially romantic liaisons. The present study revisits the construct of romantic relationships steered by social media platforms, through the dimensions of self-disclosure, social intimacy and trust. The role of trust as a mediator to determine the success of online dating is also explored in this study.

The study uses the data collected from 225 respondents (86 females and 139 males) in the age group of 18 to 30 years. The respondents were asked to fill a questionnaire (provided they fulfilled the necessary conditions and expressed their consent to be a participant in this study).

The study validates that the extent of self-disclosure propels the degree of social intimacy. The results also confirm a significant partial mediation effect of trust on the relationship between social intimacy and the success of online dating. Thus, practitioners need to keep in mind that the probability of online dating success is higher when individuals disclose more and engage in an intimate relationship driven by trust.

The study sample is restricted to young adults ranging from 18 to 30 years, based on the author’s convenience. The study was restricted to three most popular social media platforms in India where disclosure is limited to private timelines or messages. Another limitation of this study is that a multi-variate model of analysis could not be used due to the lack of parallel variables. Further studies can also compare online versus offline dating behaviour and determinants that influence the romantic relationship between two partners.

The new perspective could be to ascertain specific built-in mechanisms providers should develop to ensure that the new generation benefits from new technology rather than falling victim to its toxins.

The study re-establishes the importance of the role of trust in any romantic relationship – may it be online or the more traditional, offline or face-to-face mode.

The study delves into the domain of existing romantic relationships established through the modernistic viewpoint of online social media platforms. The findings bring a fresh perspective on the dynamics of online romantic relationships through the mélange of self-disclosure, social intimacy and trust. Previous literature suggests that trust is dependent on self-disclosure, which is in contrast with the results of the current study. The present study corroborates that trust leads to the success of online dating.