Abstract

Objective Relationship status e g married single is linked to mental and physical health outcomes However beyond this static binary measure of relationship stability it is not known how different patterns of moving in and out of these static statuses effect outcomes Therefore using a recent nationally representative sample of emerging adults the present longitudinal study examined patterns of relationship stability among young people between the ages of 17 and 27 and their links with mental and physical health outcomes Method Using mixed-method participants romantic relationship status was coded across five waves into types of relationship stability patterns Then using quantitative methods we determined if relationship stability pattersn differed on self-reported measures of mental health i e psychological distress physical health e g chronic illness self-reported health and health behaviors e g sleep binge drinking smoking using appropriate regression models i e linear Poisson logistic Results Participants N 694 were five relationship stability patterns were determined Stable Single 42 6 Stable Committed 2 5 Moving into Commitment 34 2 Moving Out of Commitment 3 9 and In and Out of Commitment 16 9 Linear regression analyses revealed that these relationship stability patterns differed on health outcomes including mental health self-reported physical health and problematic health behaviors such as alcohol use Conclusions Emerging adults in the Moving Out of Commitment group seemed to fair the worst compared to those in the Stable Single group across various mental and physical health problems while those in the Moving In And Out of Commitment group only fared worse on problematic health behaviors