The Romantic Lives of Emerging Adults
This introductory chapter provides an overview of emerging adults and the challenges they face. It examines the unstable nature of emerging adulthood itself as a prelude to the discussion of the romantic lives of emerging adults. Tending to view relationships as either undependable or too difficult to manage at this point in their lives, emerging adults are retaining their independence longer and putting a heavier reliance on nonromantic relationships. On the other hand, most of them do foresee getting married and are desirous of forming long-term, trusting relationships. Emerging adults are apparent contradictions and this book aims to shed some light on how and why this is so. This introductory chapter also describes the methods used for the book’s original research and summarizes the chapter content. It concludes with a “case study” of one emerging adult research participant.