The Youth and Premarital Relationships: A Qualitative Study of Contexts, Interactions and Conse-quences

The present paper is an attempt to study the mediation of constructionist-interpretive approach in exploration and investigation about the contexts and semantic implications of premarital relations of the youth and their consequences for martial life in the Sanandaj City. The data of this qualitative study were collected through in-depth interviews and analyzed through grounded theory method. 21 respondents were selected through targeted theoretical sampling method and were interviewed. The collected data were coded and analyzed in 18 axial categories and one core category. The findings of the research indicate that the youth have turned to relations with the opposite sex before marriage because of emotional problems, intensified sexual desires, and membership and facilitation of acceptance in peer groups. However, stimulations of opposite sex have functioned as facilitating grounds and modern information and communication technology as intervening conditions. The responding youth have sustained relations with the opposite sex with the mediation of two strategies, i.e. “love relations” and “relations based on deception”. According to the findings of the present study, the experience of premarital relations, by strengthening the sense of nostalgia, has such consequences as regret, seeking sexual diversity and comparison, family conflicts, unfaithfulness, and lack of commitment to marital life. The core category of “volatility of marital ties” is related to the consequences of premarital relations of the youth for marital life.