ABSTRACT
The complexity of imagining, let alone managing, a complex network of relationships can be illustrated by showing what happens when we move from the individual to the network level. The boundary is the dyadic boundary that marks off what is and is not shared about the relationship with members of the partners' surrounding social network. While rules perspectives take a prescriptive approach to managing a network of relationships, dialectic approaches focus on the problems that the rules are trying to solve. The integration–separation dialectic represents conflicting desires for intimacy and autonomy inside the relationship and conflicting desires for inclusion and seclusion with respect to the surrounding network. The stability–change dialectic can also be seen inside a given relationship and in the way the relationship fits into its surrounding network. one may disclose to a network member in order to work the relational boundaries.
