RelationWatch Research Brief #03
New relationships, romantic rivals, jealousy, and escalation in relationship-connected crime. This Brief uses its own fixed 1037-case RelationWatch snapshot: Brief 01’s original 1,000 cases plus 37 additional verified public cases.
Fixed 1037-case snapshot Recorded context, not inferred chronologyThis Brief analyzes 260 of 1037 cases because they have at least one structured indicator of new-partner intent, an affair started/concurrent relationship, or romantic-rival/love-triangle context. The remaining 776 cases are still part of the fixed snapshot, but do not have one of these specific context indicators recorded. They may involve other relationship conditions or warning patterns covered in Briefs 01 and 02; they are not treated as evidence that no relationship factor existed.
The structured fields record relationship context and behavior, but do not consistently identify whether the victim or the alleged offender was the person who began a new relationship. The visual therefore compares documented relationship situations, contexts, behaviors, and outcomes; it does not assign a new relationship to a particular person without a specific structured record.
The Sankey displays strongest documented co-occurrences among cases where new-partner intent, an affair started/concurrent relationship, or romantic-rival context was recorded. It is not a claim that every link is a complete time sequence or causal pathway.
Jealousy, stalking, threats, and affair secrecy/discovery are shown only when structured in the case record.
Outcome classifications among the 260 cases in Brief 03’s analytical group.
Composition of Brief 03’s analytical group; this is not national prevalence.
Recorded-person age distribution in Brief 03’s analytical group.
These are the strongest comparable intersections that the structured fields can support. The dataset does not reliably record whether the victim or the alleged offender was the person who started a new relationship, so the diagram uses neutral context labels.
Each number after an arrow is the subset satisfying every preceding recorded condition. These are documented intersections, not a proven event sequence or causal pathway.
Comparison within the same fixed 1,037-case Brief 03 snapshot. The relationship-context categories can overlap, so rows should not be added together.
Answer: Yes, the recorded pattern differs. New-partner intent, an affair started/concurrent relationship, or rival/triangle context was more frequently recorded while couples were still together (169 of 708, 23.9%) than after separation or in former partnerships (33 of 183, 18.0%). An affair started/concurrent relationship was especially concentrated while together (21.3% vs. 10.9%). By contrast, among the relevant-context subset, stalking (27.3% vs. 4.1%), threats (45.5% vs. 35.5%), and romantic-rival/love-triangle context (5.5% vs. 1.4%) were proportionally more often recorded after separation or in former partnerships. These are documented co-occurrence patterns in RelationWatch cases, not proof that a new relationship caused the incident.
| Recorded pattern | Separated/former | Still together |
|---|---|---|
| Cases in relationship group | 183 | 708 |
| New-partner intent / affair started / rival context | 33 (18.0%) | 169 (23.9%) |
| Affair started / concurrent relationship | 20 (10.9%) | 151 (21.3%) |
| New-partner intent / replacement / leaving | 15 (8.2%) | 78 (11.0%) |
| Rival/love-triangle context | 10 (5.5%) | 10 (1.4%) |
Within the relevant-context subset: