ABSTRACT
As will be seen in this chapter, friendship is viewed as central to relationship maintenance/ enhancement in certain contemporary theories. What do you think would be a better strategy for making a close relationship work and be successful over a long period: Either you regularly overlook the faults of your partner and choose to emphasize mainly your partner’s strengths? Or you choose to often challenge your partner’s weaknesses (in a nice way, of course)? Or perhaps you do a little of both-sometimes overlooking weaknesses and sometimes confronting your partner about these weaknesses? In this chapter, these different positions are on display in the contemporary theoretical work and research on maintenance and enhancement of close relationships.
