ABSTRACT
The quest to elucidate factors associated with marital stability or satisfaction is long-standing and pervasive. Sophisticated investigations of features of satisfying marriages, self-report measures of marital stability, and applied programs aimed toward enriching marriages can be traced back to the 1930s. Research during the 1970s indicated that communication is strongly associated with marital satisfaction. In addition, literally hundreds of investigations on stability or satisfaction in romantic relationships have been undertaken. M. Dainton and L. Stafford expressed concern with efforts directed at ascertaining strategies, which they considered as behaviors invoked with the intent to sustain the relationship. They contended that maintenance behaviors might also be less strategic. For at least some relational maintenance scholars the distinction between strategic and routine appears to be a meaningful, albeit perhaps intuitive one. The choice of the term routine was not perhaps the best one. Routine seems to imply regularity to actions or events.
