Relationships

3 Keys to Understanding a Romantic Partner

Your partner’s past can be a guide to understanding the present.

Posted April 11, 2026

Everyone wishes to understand their romantic partner better, but it’s not always clear what to look for. Sally feels she’s pretty good at figuring out her new partner’s likes and dislikes, but she doesn’t always hit the mark. They get along well most of the time, but every so often he seems to get angry for no reason. It might be a meal that’s overcooked or undercooked, or an overreaction to her teasing him about her feelings toward him. These problems seem minor now, but Sally worries that they’ll take on more significance as the relationship proceeds. Maybe, she thinks, she should get out of it now.

Adult Relationship Predictors

The vast literature on what’s known as “attachment style” suggests that the earliest of childhood relationships can set the stage for how adults feel about themselves and their partners. In brief, an attachment style is the approach to relationships an individual develops based on the way they were cared for in childhood. People with “secure” attachment styles feel that others can be trusted to support them; “insecure” attachment styles develop in people who feel they may be abandoned or neglected by significant others in their lives.

According to a new study by the University of North Carolina Greensboro’s Phil Lamb and colleagues (2026), the attachment style based on infancy is only one piece of the relationship puzzle. You don’t spend your entire adult life replaying the events from your earliest moments on earth. Instead, you carry your attachment style forward into new relationships, starting with those you form in childhood as you develop friendships. A great deal of new learning about relationships takes place in these “antecedents of adjustment in romantic relationships." This process becomes even more relevant to later relationships when you move into adolescence. Now you’ve got friends who will allow you to experiment with peer-to-peer relationships that increasingly look like those you’ll have with a romantic partner.

The quality of parental interactions becomes the third relationship predictor, according to Lamb et al. Your attachment style and even your friendships can only go so far in affecting how you form and maintain adult relationships. Throughout your early years, you witness the way your parents or other caregivers manage conflict, solve problems, and express affection. Maybe you were lucky and your parents hardly fought or, if they did, resolved disputes amicably. But maybe your home life was rockier, and the adults who raised you engaged not just in occasional bickering, but in full-fledged warfare. Perhaps they got divorced, so tension wasn’t present all the time; however, you may have constantly struggled with an undercurrent of what Lamb et al. consider less-than-positive role modeling.

Testing Early Life Predictors of Adult Romantic Satisfaction

The three elements of figuring out how an adult relationship will go, in summary, are attachment style, friendships, and parental interactions. With a large and representative dataset at their disposal, the research team tracked participants and their parents over a period of 26 to 31 years, beginning in childhood. The 505 participants who remained in the study until their late 20s completed a standard measure of relationship adjustment that assesses cohesion, consensus, and expression of emotions.

The prior data included measures of maternal sensitivity based on observational data gathered while participants were from 6 months to 15 years. In the last of these assessments, the mother-participant pairs discussed an area of conflict such as curfews and chores. As an example of maternal sensitivity in this 15-year-old assessment, observers rated the mothers on validation, engagement, respect for autonomy, and warmth as well as inhibiting relatedness and hostility/devaluation.

To measure friendship quality, the authors administered a questionnaire with items such as companionship, help and guidance, intimate disclosure, conflict and betrayal, and conflict resolution.

Finally, spousal interactions entered into the prediction equation via a measure of emotional intimacy (as reported by the mother) that included statements such as “My spouse/partner listens to me when I need someone to talk to.” These assessments were completed 8 times across childhood into the age of 15.

Overall, each of the three sets of predictors played a significant role as influences on adult relationship adjustment. However, the intimacy that mothers reported with their romantic partners played a uniquely predictive role. As the authors concluded: “adult romantic adjustment…may…reflect childhood observations of romantic processes in one’s family of origin."

Putting the Three Predictors into Practice

Returning to Sally, it seems clear from the UNC Greensboro study that she could obtain a reasonable idea of how this new partner is going to work out by doing some relationship history digging. Although his attachment style based on infancy and early childhood is clearly not accessible, she can look for cues from the way he deals with separation. Insecurely attached people become anxious and needy when they’re not with their partner. So far, she hasn’t seen evidence of this, but he did get worked up over that joke, which he perceived as suggesting Sally doesn’t really love him.

She might then do some investigation into his childhood and teenage pals. Is he still friends with them or has he moved on, not seeming to care about them anymore? Maybe his friendships fell by the wayside due to his tendency to argue with them over seemingly insignificant differences of opinion.

Finally, the romantic relationships of his parents may still be observable if they are still in his life. Do they seem to be warm and friendly to each other or are they constantly at odds? If she doesn’t have this direct evidence in front of her, maybe a peek at old family albums could provide a clue. Siblings and/or other relatives also could help provide a window into the quality of the parents’ relationship. Based on the Lamb et al. study, a chat with the mother could also help illuminate any difficulties during adolescence, such as constant threats she made to take away his privileges when he was starting to exercise his autonomy.

To sum up, no single predictor of relationship quality, or even three, can completely provide guidance on whether a new romantic partner will turn out to be someone you can love and trust. However, the three clues of early attachment, childhood/adolescent friendships, and parental interactions can provide a good start.

Read the original article on Psychology Today →