A panel study of the associations between maintenance strategies and relational characteristics

Resilience in marriage is tied to the manner in which people strategically maintain their relationships. The associations between perceptions of five relational maintenance strategies (positivity, openness, assurances, social networks, and sharing tasks) and three fundamental relationship characteristics (liking, commitment, and control mutuality) are examined concurrently and over time. At three points in time, each separated by a month, married partners reported their perceptions of partner maintenance activities and their own beliefs regarding the relational characteristics. Results indicate that perceptions of maintenance strategies significantly add to the variance of these relational features, even when controlling for the participants' previous reports of the same measures.