Music across the love-span: a mixed methods study into the use of music in romantic relationships

Music is known to be a powerful tool for social bonding, but its role in romantic relationships remains poorly understood. The present study explored the perceived relevance of music to three core aspects of love (intimacy, passion and commitment) across three relationship stages: attraction, building, and maintenance.

Using a mixed-methods approach, 174 participants (83% female, 14% male, 3% other) responded to self-report ratings assessing the role of music for the three aspects of love across the three relationship stages, as well as open-ended questions reflecting on their music-related experiences at each relationship stage.

Results from quantitative ratings showed that music promotes intimacy and passion, particularly during the attraction and building phases, with less impact on commitment and during the maintenance phase. Participants with greater musical expertise and sensitivity to music-related reward rated music as more important overall and as contributing more strongly to aspects of love, with this pattern remaining consistent across relationship phases and aspects of love. This suggests that musical ability and preference may be used across relationship stages as tools to assess compatibility between partners, rather than being generally attractive traits. Qualitative analysis of 351 coded open responses revealed a set of 55 key musical actions (e.g., listening, sharing and making music) and outcomes (e.g., bonding, (re)connecting and assessing compatibility) related to participants' use of music throughout the three relationship stages. Themes such as signalling attraction and emotional communication were most prominent in the attraction phase, whereas bonding through shared musical activities was more common in later phases.

The present study provides a first systematic investigation of the role of music for different phases and aspects of romantic relationships. The findings provide valuable insights for music research, relationship studies, and therapeutic practice, highlighting the role of music in fostering connection and intimacy in romantic relationships.