‘Just Talking’ Delays Commitment in Romantic Relationships 

What ever happened to dating? This is a question I’ve been asking as a researcher, clinician, and educator for the past decade. In my most recent IFS blog post, I discussed a substantial change in the way emerging adults (18 to 29-year-olds) are forming romantic relationships. Smartphones, social media, and dating apps have changed and continue to substantially alter the way young people are forming romantic relationships. By literally having access to thousands of potential partners via social media and dating apps, many emerging adults are struggling to let go of their vast sea of romantic options and commit to a partner worth investing the time and energy it takes to have a healthy relationship.

A couple of months ago, my colleagues and I published a new research article in the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy entitled “‘We’re Just Talking’: Constructing a Recent Trend in Emerging Adult Romantic Relationship Development.” In the study, we explored the pervasive trend of just talking in emerging adult romantic relationships through data that was collected employing nine focus groups consisting of men and women from two large Midwestern universities. Through the use of constructivist grounded theory, 11 unique themes were generated regarding the following categories: the conceptualization of just talking, reasons for just talking, and the role of technology in just talking.

Instead of asking or being asked out on dates, most emerging adults seem to first engage in a just talking romantic journey paved by ambiguity.

One of the fundamental ways that just talking interrupts the romantic relationship formation process is that it delays the clarification of commitment. According to the most recent data from U.S. Census Bureau, the median age at first marriage is now at 30.2 for men and 28.4 for women (see more here and here). There are a variety of factors why emerging adults are delaying commitment and marriage to later ages compared to previous generations. We believe that just talking may be one of the factors delaying the clarification of commitment, because it slows down the processes of romantic relationship formation that traditionally would occur through dating.

Where Have All the Good Dates Gone?

Instead of asking or being asked out on dates, most emerging adults seem to first engage in a just talking romantic journey paved by ambiguity. Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with eight emerging adult men in a focus group for one of my research team’s projects. As one male participant explained regarding smartphones, social media apps, and the necessity of the just talking stage in contemporary relationship formation:

It’s kind of interesting…because it's like we’re saying this stage is so essential and necessary to dating. Before [just talking] when people went on dates, the mystery was kind of gone. Like when you finally get on that first date, you have exhausted all the things you could really connect over because you're talking about it over the phone. It's just interesting that we kind of all are going to say [just talking] is essential, but like before it wasn’t really.

This qualitative data comes from another project I have been working on with my team for four years that we call the Romantic Relationship Formation Continuum. Interestingly, almost all of our 57 participants (33 women and 24 men) from nine different focus groups stated that they would prefer to be going on dates instead of just talking. This is consistent with all of the previous research I have done on this topic, as well as with what I am hearing from current students in the classroom, and what we found in one of our previous research studies with 655 emerging adults that indicated only 7.6% of them would rather be just talking instead of going on dates. As a female participant explained in our most recent study:   

Previous generations probably didn’t have just talking stages. Now people, I think, are more afraid of commitment and like…exploring their options. So that’s why I think the just talking stage is so common. That’s kind of what people do now before they start going on dates, or even if they are just talking, and it doesn’t end up working out…I just think it’s really interesting how much the norms have shifted. It has gone from knowing that you want to date this person, and you are actively going out with them, to where it is now where we are just talking.

So where have all of the good dates gone? Well, traditional dating just doesn’t seem to occur like it once did. Instead, the rise of communication facilitated through smartphones, social media, and dating apps seems to be at the forefront of the filtering in the romantic relationship formation processes.

Slowing Down, Yet Speeding Up

A consistent finding has been that the development of commitment seems to have slowed down, yet other aspects of romantic relationships have sped up, specifically the timing and initiation of sex. While certainly many emerging adults are not engaging in sexual activity during the pre-dating stage of just talking, one research study indicated that for some, hooking-up does appear to part of the romantic equation.

This reminds me of what some of my colleagues have written about regarding commitment, signaling, and sequence. Commitment used to be a fundamental component of sexual relationships, but for many young people, modern romance seems to rearrange the ordering of romantic decisions. As Drs. Jason Carroll and Brian Willoughby explain, however, research reveals that a myth exists regarding the necessity of sexual experience to test your compatibility with a romantic partner.

Interestingly, many of the women in our focus groups also explained that generally they had a “three-month rule” of just talking, before they would allow themselves to take the next step in their relationship. One of themes from our newly-published article regarding the conceptualization of just talking was the “ambiguity about commitment.” As we explained in our study:

Participants also reported considering how many people a person was just talking to as a reflection of whether they were seriously considering a person for a rela­tionship or not. Participants’ responses were mixed regarding whether they only ever talked to just one person at a time, or whether they talked to several people before committing to exploring a relationship’s potential with one person. This may reflect subjective personal ethical standards about how one should treat people, and perhaps more specifically people they are engaging with in early-stage casual romantic and sexual interactions.

The results showed that many emerging adults kept their levels of commitment low and their options open as a way to protect themselves from potential rejection. This fear of rejection seems to be a real motivating factor. Since the commitment is not clarified and it is “not officially” a relationship, there is an expectation that your potential romantic partner might also be talking to other people.

As I explained in a previous post on my blog, those questioning whether a partner is really into them or if a relationship has a future should have the courage to clarify the commitment in the relationship. Defining the relationship can be scary but is always the best approach. Because people communicate signals about commitment frequently, it is important to be observant. It's better to end things with a person who is a weak link before sliding into an apartment, getting married, and especially having children together. While anyone has the potential to be in a healthy relationship, this generally requires taking a proactive rather than reactive stance.

'Just Talking' Is Probably Here To Stay

By their very nature, just talking relationships also create a great deal of alternative monitoring (focusing attention on romantic alter­natives) and asymmetrical commitment (where one partner is more committed to the relationship than the other). Clinicians, educators, and others that work with emerging adults should consider how alternative monitoring and asymmetrical commitment are associated with increases in infidelity, conflict, and, of course, breaking up.

As I have stated before, just talking appears to be here to stay. Students often ask me, “is just talking only associated with negative outcomes?” My answer is: of course not. This pre-dating behavior can provide a worthwhile screening process for finding a compatible romantic partner. However, we should not forget the potential negative effects that can delay the kind of commitment that can potentially lead to marriage and family formation.  

D. Scott Sibley, Ph.D., LMFT, CFLE is an Associate Professor in Human Development and Family Sciences and the Associate Chair in the School of Family and Consumer Sciences at Northern Illinois University. He researches commitment in couple relationships and romantic relationship formation. Learn more about Dr. Sibley and his research team at DecideToCommit.com.