The present work aimed to explore the building process of couple identity for stepcouples’ partners. Fifteen Italian women and fifteen Italian men, engaged in a new couple’s relationship after first-union separation or divorce, were interviewed. Semi-structured interviews were analyzed through a Grounded Theory approach. Results showed that the first-union separation experience plays an important role in the process of stepcouple identity building, as it influences the priorities in individual organization of life, qualities, and expectations about new relationships, the importance attributed to individual, couple, and family boundaries, and the choice of the new partner. New functional stepcouple relationships are characterized by a strong sense of shared projects and purposes. This generative dimension, clearly perceived by interviewees as a fundamental characteristic of stepcouple identity, is a resource, in spite of complexity and challenges of stepcouples’ life cycle.

目前的工作旨在探索继夫妇伴侣的夫妻身份构建过程。15 名意大利女性和 15 名意大利男性在首次结合分居或离婚后建立了新婚关系，接受了采访。半结构化访谈通过扎根理论方法进行分析。结果表明，初婚分离经历在继夫妻身份建立过程中起着重要作用，因为它影响个人生活组织的优先级、品质和对新关系的期望，以及个人、夫妻和家庭的重要性边界，以及新伙伴的选择。新的功能性夫妻关系的特点是强烈的共享项目和目的感。尽管继夫妇的生命周期存在复杂性和挑战，但受访者清楚地认为，这种生成维度是继夫妻身份的基本特征，是一种资源。