Study: Believing in a relationship's future goes with feeling more securely attached

How secure people feel in a romantic relationship appears to depend less on their past than on how they see the future. That is the suggestion of a study by Fan Yang (Waseda University, Tokyo) and Zichen Zhai (Nagoya University), published on 16 September in the journal BMC Psychology and presented by Waseda University on 9 October. The researchers surveyed 603 men aged 20 to 29 in Shanghai – 303 gay and 300 heterosexual. Of these, 510 had been in at least one committed relationship.

On average, the gay participants reported more attachment anxiety and avoidance, even after accounting for income and occupation. Their relationship histories – the number of past relationships and the length of the shortest one – were, however, similar. What mattered was how stable the men judged their relationships to be: gay participants rated them as less stable, and this factor fully accounted for the attachment differences statistically. "The feeling that 'this relationship has a future' may be an important part of romantic security," Yang said.

The authors see this as a sign that social barriers such as the lack of legal recognition for same-sex couples and discrimination may weaken the sense of security in relationships, and that reducing them could strengthen it. Limitations: the study is a cross-sectional survey based on self-reports, so it cannot establish cause and effect. The sample covers only young men from one Chinese city. The study was preregistered; the paper lists no funding.