Does a romantic partner’s friendship feel more threatening when the friend is of a different sex rather than the same sex?

Details

The study asked participants to respond to scenarios about a romantic partner’s significant friendship outside the couple. It examined the friend’s sex, the friendship’s history, and how participants judged threats to their romantic relationship.

The central finding was that friendships with someone of a different sex were associated with greater perceived threats than friendships with someone of the same sex. The researchers also found that different perceived threats helped account statistically for links between friendship characteristics and different forms of jealousy. Concerns about whether the romantic relationship would continue were linked to sexual jealousy and jealousy about companionship. Concerns about relationship quality were linked to jealousy about intimacy, power, and companionship.

These were responses to scenarios, not observations of how friendships affected actual couples over time. The findings therefore do not establish that a friend’s sex causes jealousy or that a perceived threat reflects actual danger to a relationship. The abstract does not specify participants’ ages or sexual orientations, which limits how specifically the results can be applied.