| Abstract: | The present study examined people's accounts of risky relationship experiences, with the aim of documenting (a) the types of issues and events that people view as “danger zones” in their dating relationships as well as (b) the feelings and emotions that they experience in response to situations in which such risks arise. A detailed content analysis of participants’(N= 51) risk accounts revealed a considerable diversity in both the range of risk experiences recalled and their affective concomitants. The results suggest that individuals’relational concerns vary widely and, more importantly, that there may be important connections or links between certain of the relational circumstances that occasion feelings of risk (e.g., acts of self-disclosure and fears of negative evaluation). In addition, although participants employed an extensive vocabulary of affect terms in describing their emotional responses to the risks they faced, we found little evidence that particular types of risks (e.g., concerns about relationship exclusivity) elicited particular types of affective response (e.g., sadness). Feelings of fear and anxiety appeared more frequently across accounts than any other emotions, a finding that held generally true even when we considered the type of risk recalled. |
