‘Rosters’ put casual partners into an informal dating hierarchy, study finds

How rosters are maintained

Participants described rosters as multiple concurrent, non-committed relationships that usually emerge rather than being intentionally planned. These partners were organized within an informal hierarchy and maintained through ongoing communication.

Rosters could provide sexual access, validation, emotional support, ways to evaluate partners and protection against uncertainty in relationships. Participants also reported using strategic ambiguity, selective disclosure and communication management to sustain the arrangements. The researchers characterize rosters as distinct from both established casual sexual relationships and consensual non-monogamy.

The study included 46 adults: 52.2% identified as female, 45.7% as male and 2.2% as non-binary.

Why this relationship form matters

Most research on casual sexual relationships has focused on two-person arrangements such as hookups, friends-with-benefits relationships and situationships. This study suggests that rosters may be another relationship structure that needs to be considered in research on intimacy, sexual communication and commitment.

The findings also point to a possible emerging sexual script connected with dating-app culture, managing concurrent partners and changing expectations around relationships. They do not establish how common rosters are, but they provide a framework for studying how people understand and organize them.

Evidence and caveats

The findings come from in-depth interviews with 46 adults analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, a qualitative method for identifying patterns in participants’ accounts. This approach provides detail about how participants described their relationships but does not measure how widespread rosters are or test whether the reported patterns apply to adults more broadly.

The study is exploratory, and the abstract does not provide information about the participants’ recruitment, location or other characteristics that could affect how transferable the findings are. The results also describe participants’ accounts rather than independently verifying the structure or disclosure practices of their relationships.