6.  Identity precedes intimacy

In the area of love emerging adults engage in a number of different romantic relationships, the goal of which is to get an answer to the question:  “Given that I am this sort of person, what sort of person would suit me as my life partner?”  This search for an identity in love relationships can take quite a while.  Today’s twenty-something young people most often do not get married until their late twenties or early thirties.  In this the current generation differs from their parents, most of who married in their early twenties.

Furthermore, for them identity formation takes precedence over establishing a committed, intimate relationship with another emerging adult.  For a time the relationships they do form, whether romantic or friendship, are of necessity fluid and focused on the job of identity exploration.  This even holds for the relationships they form in order to make a choice in a marriage partner.  They may prefer to live together with someone to discover what it is like to be married before they actually marry.  Cohabitation is a less committed form of living together and fits the for-the-time-being character of emerging adulthood.