Emotional Resource, Academic Cost? Romantic Relationships, Academic Functioning and Psychological Well-Being among Students at a Public University in Egypt: A Mixed-Methods Study

Abstract Few studies have examined how university students’ romantic relationships relate to both academic functioning and psychological well-being where premarital intimacy is socially regulated. This mixed-methods study combined an online survey of undergraduates at a public university in Egypt (N = 260) with ten interviewer-prepared interview accounts. Compared with never-partnered students, those describing their relationship as stable scored higher (β = 0.43) and those describing it as troubled lower (β = −0.56) on a study-developed index of psychological well-being, largely robust in sensitivity analyses. Relationship-experienced students reported lower grade categories (odds ratio 0.49, 95% confidence interval 0.29–0.81), but this association weakened or lost significance when 39 never-partnered respondents reporting a relationship duration of six months or more were excluded or reclassified, and an interaction test did not show that it varied by year of study (p = .255). Within relationships (n = 128), relationship quality was associated with higher achievement motivation (β = 0.30), robust to multiple-testing adjustment, and perceived relationship-to-study interference with lower motivation (β = −0.34) and, less robustly, engagement; interference was not empirically distinct from relationship strain, which was unrelated to either outcome overall. Social support was associated with a weaker strain–well-being link, not robust to multiple-testing adjustment, and a stronger strain–interference link. Interview accounts, which contextualise rather than corroborate these patterns, described study boundaries, distraction during conflict and concealment from families. Because the data are cross-sectional, self-reported and from one university, these are associations, not effects.