Relational dialectics and social networking sites: The role of Facebook in romantic relationship escalation, maintenance, conflict, and dissolution

•Romantic relationships face many challenges on social networking sites.•Facebook’s affordances (connectivity and visibility) can create turmoil.•Facebook promotes integration in couples, but makes independence difficult.•Couples experience conflict over appropriate expression and privacy management.•Social networking sites provide a unique context for relational dialectics.

Due to their prevalence and unique affordances, social networking sites such as Facebook have the potential to influence offline relationships. This study employed Baxter’s (2011) refinement of relational dialectics theory to explore Facebook’s role in emerging adults’ romantic relationships. Data from ten focus groups revealed that Facebook contributes to and provides a forum for discursive struggles related to the integration–separation, expression–privacy, and stability–change dialectics. Romantic partners are able to connect with each other and integrate their social networks on Facebook, but some struggle to maintain privacy and independence. As such, SNSs can be a site of and trigger for romantic conflict. Participants’ responses indicated that Facebook is interwoven with the experience of these dialectics due to its affordances, specifically the semi-public nature of relationship activities on Facebook and the shift in control over relational information from individuals to network members.