Sex, dating, passionate friendships, and romance: intimate peer relations among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents

Although the raw number of adolescent romantic and sexual involvements is well documented, the actual experience and meaning of these relationships for adolescents receives little attention. As a result, these relationships are frequently classed together on the basis of surface similarities, despite important structural and functional differences. Attention to these differences, however, reveals how young men and women craft adaptive constellations of peer relationships to meet changing needs for intimacy and social support during the multiple transitions of adolescence. In this chapter we put forth a typology of intimate peer relationships based on the motives prompting adolescents to pursue them, their specific characteristics, and the functions they serve. We specify four varieties of adolescent relationships -- sexual relationships, dating relationships, passionate friendships, and romantic relationships -- representing prototypical combinations of some of the most salient motives, characteristics, and functions.