Université de Montréal study finds a paradox in young adults’ accounts of romance

Université de Montréal reported on October 9 that a four-year study of 41 young adults in Montreal, Paris and New York found a contrast in how participants talked about romance: many described modern dating bleakly, then recounted their own relationships as exceptional. The finding offers a way to understand those accounts, but the small qualitative study cannot show how widespread the pattern is.

The research was conducted by doctoral researcher Jules Pector-Lallemand under the supervision of sociology professor Barbara Thériault. His peer-reviewed article, published in Sexuality & Culture on August 19, examines the tension between pessimism and exceptionality in stories about love. The university’s October report brought that interpretation to a wider audience.

How the Montreal, Paris and New York study worked

Pector-Lallemand followed adults aged 18 to 35 over four years, with 13 of the 41 participants observed more intensively for a year and a half. The group included heterosexual and LGBTQ+ people, couples and single people, and people in monogamous and non-monogamous relationships. Those differences gave the researcher varied accounts to examine; they do not make the group a representative sample of young adults.

Alongside interviews, he worked as a dishwasher in a Montreal bar, observing gestures between people and comparing what he saw with what participants said. The university’s account describes an inquiry into how people understand and narrate their experiences, rather than a survey designed to count how many young adults hold a particular view.

Why participants described their own relationships differently

Asked about their own experiences, however, participants told stories that Pector-Lallemand said resembled fairy tales. He identified three recurring elements: a meeting experienced as an unexpected ‘miracle’; fears or earlier difficulties that the people involved had to work through; and a present relationship experienced as healing. He interprets the exceptional quality of those stories against the pessimistic picture participants drew of dating in general.

The meetings themselves were varied. Participants described finding partners through apps, friends and chance encounters, so the study does not cast an app as the only path into a relationship. Nor were the obstacles identical: accounts included fear of non-monogamy, insecurity after an unexplained breakup and a wish to depart from a family relationship model a participant considered toxic.

Pector-Lallemand said vulnerability often formed a turning point in these accounts, as people disclosed fears, anxieties or past wounds before committing. Participants’ descriptions of healing were personal, too. One said a relationship had cured a ‘saviour complex’; another described finding fulfillment in an open relationship. These examples illustrate how participants framed their experiences. They do not establish that a relationship would have the same effect for others.

What a larger French survey shows about dating

Separate research from France’s Institut national d’études démographiques, or INED, puts some of the discussion about apps in demographic context. Its ENVIE report analyzed a 2023 phone survey of 10,021 people aged 18 to 29 in mainland France. The survey used randomly generated mobile numbers, with fieldwork conducted by Ipsos. It examined relationships and where people met partners, rather than the narrative pattern identified in Pector-Lallemand’s interviews.

In that survey, 79% reported at least one romantic or sexual relationship in the previous 12 months. A couple relationship was reported by 66%, a one-night stand by 21%, and a lasting relationship outside those categories by 15%; respondents could fall into more than one category. Among those reporting a couple relationship, 77% said they were very much in love with that partner, while another 17% said they were quite in love.

Apps were one route to meeting partners, but their share varied by relationship type. INED reported that 11% of respondents with a couple relationship had met that partner through an app, compared with 21% reporting a one-night stand and 16% reporting a lasting relationship outside those categories. Among those with a couple relationship, 34% said they met their partner at school or work. Those figures qualify any picture of dating as taking place entirely through apps.

What the two studies cannot establish

The INED figures describe reported experiences among young adults in mainland France. They cannot confirm whether the three-city study’s contrast between general pessimism and personal hope is common there, or elsewhere. Equally, the 41 participants’ accounts cannot be used to estimate its prevalence. The findings are most useful as an interpretation of how these participants told their stories, alongside broader evidence that young people’s relationships and ways of meeting remain varied.