ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews various types of relational communication and discusses the value of viewing the behaviours as skills. It identifies some skilled behaviours seen as fundamental to successful social relationships and considers themes historically understood as quality communication in the scholarship on relationships. 'Uses' of long-term relationships as an analogy for deciding what short-term relationships should be offering might point to the errors in too simple a conclusion about the extension of one type of relationship skill to another. The communicative standards applied to assessments of 'quality' in relationships have their roots in a society's assumptions about 'personality' and the role of relationships in fulfilling self in relation to communicative standards. 'Relationships are "larger" than the physical presence or interactional accessibility of the participants'. The issue that arises in assessing skill, then, is whether the relationship is constituted by the skills or whether skills are necessary but not sufficient for relationship formation and maintenance.
