The Switcheroo: Trends in partner switching as a symptom of normative change

Using full-population Norwegian register data (1967–2020), this study examines whether partner-switching four-cycles have changed across birth cohorts and what this implies for normative regulation of intimate life. Building on Bearman, Moody, and Stovel’s argument that four-cycles are socially proscribed, I reconstruct a national bipartite partnership network from reciprocated opposite-sex marital and cohabiting dyads and identify all complete 2×2 four-cycle configurations. The network is large, sparse, and dominated by many small components plus one giant component. Four-cycles are present but rare: after conservative filtering, 320 unique cycles remain. Cohort-level models show a clear positive trend in four-cycle membership across estimation methods. Absolute probabilities remain very low, but relative increases are substantial across cohorts. I interpret this as evidence of gradual weakening of informal sanctions around socially delicate post-dissolution partner choices, consistent with normative reconfiguration in the Second Demographic Transition. The findings show how shifts in normative thresholds can produce detectable macro-level network change.