A study published in the Journal of Sex Research suggests that the relationship context plays a role in young people’s development of sexual communication within relationships.
While previous research has explored young people’s engagement in casual sexual relationships, and a separate body of research has considered youth’s romantic relationships, there exists a gap in this groundwork. As study authors Daphne van de Bongardt and Hanneke de Graaf point out, there is a lack of literature concerning young people’s sexual experiences within romantic partnerships.
Van de Bongardt and de Graaf describe four socio-sexual competences that are important to young people’s sexual health: sexual esteem, control, communication, and assertiveness. The researchers wanted to explore whether these socio-sexual competences would be equally apparent in casual and romantic relationships.
Researchers analyzed survey data from 6,098 youth in the Netherlands between the ages of 12 and 26. Each participant answered questions regarding their most recent sexual partnership and indicated whether the experience was with a current or ex-boy/girlfriend, or whether it was with someone with whom they were not in a romantic relationship. The youth also completed the Sexual Interactional Behavior Scale, with subscales measuring the four socio-sexual competences.
The majority of the young respondents (78%) reported that their most recent sexual experience had been with a romantic partner. Only 22% reported that their latest sexual encounter was with a casual partner. Interestingly, more girls (82%) reported a romantic partner as their last sexual partner than did boys (72%).
Gender differences were also apparent when it came to socio-sexual competences. Overall, girls had higher levels of sexual control and sexual communication, while boys had higher levels of sexual esteem.
The degrees of assertiveness, control, and communication were found to differ within casual versus romantic relationships. However, after adjusting for the confounder of being in love, there were no longer any differences in assertiveness or control between casual and romantic relationships. “This showed that the association between sexual partnership types (romantic versus casual) and youth’s self-reported levels of assertiveness and control can be explained by observed differences in youth’s levels of being in love,” the researchers explain.
Interestingly, adjusting for the frequency of sexual activity eliminated any significant differences in assertiveness between casual and romantic relationships. “Here, it also appears that initially observed variations in sexual assertiveness are better explained by having sex more often with a sexual partner than the relationship context (i.e., romantic versus casual) in and of itself,” Van de Bongardt and de Graaf say.
However, even after controlling for potential confounders and various demographic characteristics, sexual communication was found to be more frequent within romantic sexual relationships, compared to casual. As the authors say, “Youth who labeled their most recent sexual partnership as romantic reported more frequent communication about sexual topics with that partner than youth who labeled their most recent sex partnership as casual.”
The authors acknowledge that their findings cannot be generalized to other countries and that future research including a diversity of sexual orientations is needed.
“Based on our findings,” the researchers conclude, “we propose that further exploring why there is plasticity in how often young people discuss sexuality-related topics with different types of sexual partners, and what may be the consequences hereof for the safety and pleasure within those different partnerships, is an important first step.”
The study, “Youth’s Socio-Sexual Competences With Romantic and Casual Sexual Partners”, was authored by Daphne van de Bongardt and Hanneke de Graaf.
