Romantic relationships and loneliness in a group of South African postgraduate students
ABSTRACT According to psychological developmental theory, the formation of a committed romantic relationship is a critical psychosocial development task for young adults. They are also socialised to believe that such a relationship is the ultimate pathway to love and psychological intimacy and they may therefore experience general and romantic loneliness in its absence. However, people in romantic relationships can also experience romantic loneliness, while single people may be romantically alone but not necessarily romantically lonely. We could not locate any South African research on young adults and romantic loneliness and therefore conducted an exploratory study on this phenomenon in a South African postgraduate sample. A total of 622 postgraduate students completed a bio-demographic questionnaire and the Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults online. A general low level of loneliness was found overall, but the participants were found to be lonelier in the romantic domain than in the social or family loneliness domains. In addition, single participants were found to have higher levels of romantic and general loneliness than participants in committed relationships. Therefore, the results suggested that relationship status has a significant influence on romantic and general loneliness and confirmed the hegemony of romantic relationships in young adults’ lives.