What your friends and family think about your relationship does matter

When you enter into a relationship, there is a lot of sharing happening right off the bat.  Not only are you and your partner sharing details about yourselves and sharing your past experiences with each other, but you are also sharing your social networks with each other.  How much influence can your friends and family really have on your relationship?

Recent research investigated how social networks can play a part in a romantic relationship.  First, researchers looked at how each partner within the relationship perceived their friends and family felt about the relationship over time.   In general, more approval of the relationship and liking for the others friends and families increased throughout the relationship.  Specifically, for men, they felt that the approval of their relationship by their own friends and family increased as the relationship went on, as well as liking their partner’s friends more and more.  Both men and women felt that their relationship was getting more approval from their partner’s friends and family over time.  However, women did tend to like their partner’s family less as the relationship progressed.  It could be that women just flat out tend to like their partner’s family less as they get to know them more, but it could also be that certain family members are liked less over time rather than the entire family.

In another aspect of the study, the researchers looked at how these different approvals and likings of the couple’s friends and families could in fact predict the chances of the couple breaking up.  They found that the more her friends approved of the relationship and the more she liked her partner’s family would significantly increase the chances of the couple staying together five years later.  This effect was not found for men.  But why?  It could be that women are more likely to involve their friends in everything that happens in the relationship, and turn to them for advice more often than men.  If the woman’s friends don’t approve of the relationship, they’ll more than likely tell the woman to end the relationship when turned to for advice.

This research shows that outside of your own development and maintenance of your relationship, the way your friends and family feel about you and your partner can have a real effect on your relationship.  So if you are just starting a new relationship, winning your partner’s friends and family over may be essential, especially when they are giving advice to your partner!  Even though integrating your social network with your partner’s social network can be painful at times, it is clearly important to do so in a way that makes your friends and family supportive of your new relationship.

Further Reading:

Maywood, E. (2011). The trouble with in-laws…

SPRECHER, S., & FELMLEE, D. (2000). Romantic partners’perceptions of social network attributes with the passage of time and relationship transitions Personal Relationships, 7 (4), 325-340 DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-6811.2000.tb00020.x

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