ABSTRACT

To maintain a relationship, partners must communicate with one another. Conversely, as long as people communicate, they have a relationship. The end of the relationship occurs when people stop communicating. Relational maintenance processes and strategies compose the heart of relationship research. Although the processes and strategies of initiating and terminating relationships are important, people spend more time maintaining relationships than initiating or terminating them. Relational maintenance defined as maintenance of a steady state is a definition of relational maintenance at odds with dialectical theory. A number of theoretical perspectives on relationships implicitly or explicitly pertain to relational maintenance. Maintenance-by-expression occurs when partners verbalize their feelings, their observations of the relationship, and the regulation of the interaction between them. R. E. Kaplan argued that expressive maintenance is better able to sustain relationships of high involvement over time than maintenance-by-suppression. H. B. Braiker and H. H. Kelley were interested in understanding the role that conflict plays in relationship development.