Relocation and Romantic Relationships - Cross-sectional, 2018-2019

We obtained a sample of 438 individuals, which includes 70 couples (i.e., 70 participants (16%) are partners of our primary participants). The sample consists of 208 participants who initiated the couples’ relocation to a different city, state/province, or country (i.e., relocaters), and 230 participants who accommodated their partner’s initiation to move (i.e., trailers). Participants were recruited on the online research platform Prolific and filled out a ~45 minutes survey for which they were paid $10CAD (or another currency’s equivalent) and a bonus of $2CAD if their partner participated as well. Participants were eligible when they spoke English, were over the age of 18, were currently in a romantic relationship, currently lived together with their romantic partner, and importantly, when they had relocated with their partner in the past year, which was primarily for one of the partners (e.g., to support their career opportunities). Participants ranged in age from 20 to 69 (M = 32.3, SD = 7.6), 56.4% identified as women, 43.2% as men, and 0.5% as non-binary. The majority identified as heterosexual (89.3%), with others identifying as bisexual (7.5%), lesbian (1.1%), gay (0.9%), or “other” (e.g., queer or asexual; 1.1%). Most participants identified as White (North American/European, 75.1%) and others as bi- or multi-ethnic (e.g., White/Black, 6.2%), Latin American (6.2%), South Asian (4.6%), East Asian (3%), Black (2.1%), Native American/First Nations (0.7%), or “other” (e.g., Middle Eastern, Jewish, 2.3%). All participants were living together with their partner and were in their current relationship for 8.56 (SD = 5.21) years on average. Most participants were married (95.7%), and some were dating (2.3%) or indicated “other” (e.g., engaged or in a registered partnership, 2.1%). Half of the participants had children (50.2%), with most of these having one (24.2%) or two (17.1%) children. This project was approved by the University of Toronto Mississauga research ethics board on July 20, 2018 (#36046).