Maintenance Notes

Maintaining and Enhancing Relationships

  Relationship maintenance mechanisms are the strategic actions people take to sustain their partnerships.

Staying Committed

  People who are committed to a partnership

  --who want and expect it to continue--

  both think and behave differently than less committed partners do.

Cognitive Maintenance Mechanisms:

�Cognitive interdependence � Committed partners think of themselves not as separate individuals but as a couple.  

  Plural pronouns such as �we,� �us,� and �ours� replace �I,� �me,� and �mine.�

�Positive illusions � Partners idealize one another, judging each other�s faults to be relatively trivial, the relationship�s deficiencies to be relatively unimportant, and the partner�s misbehavior to be an unintentional or temporary aberration.

�Perceived superiority � People consider their relationships to be better than most.

�Inattention to alternatives � Committed partners pay less heed to the other potential partners that are available to them.  They are relatively uninterested and unaware of how well they could be doing in alternative relationships.

�Derogation of tempting alternatives � When committed partners do notice attractive rivals to their relationships, they judge them to be less desirable than others think them to be.  Commitment leads people to disparage those who could lure them away from their existing relationships.

Behavioral Maintenance Mechanisms:

�Willingness to sacrifice � Committed people often   make various personal sacrifices, doing things they   would prefer not to do, or not doing things that they   would like to do, in order to promote the well-being   of their partners or their relationships. 

�Michelangelo phenomenon � Committed lovers also promote their partners� growth, helping them become the people they want to be by supporting their development of desired new skills and endorsing their acceptance of promising new roles and responsibilities.

�Play � Committed partners find ways to engage in novel, challenging, exciting, and pleasant activities together. Couples that play together really do tend to stay together.

�Forgiveness � Committed partners offer forgiveness after a betrayal more readily than less committed partners do.  Forgiveness benefits both the relationship and the partner who was wronged because it is less stressful to forgive an intimate partner than to nurse a grudge.

�Forgiveness

  Forgiveness  occurs when we give up our perceived right to retaliate against, or hold in our debt, someone who has wronged us.

Forgiveness occurs more readily when�

  (a)  the offender apologizes, and

  (b)  the victim is able to empathize with the offender, being able to imagine why the  partner behaved as he or she did.

  Secure and agreeable people are more forgiving than insecure or less agreeable people are.

Communication scholars have noted other actions that distinguish happy partners from those who are less content.  They include:

�Positivity � Contented partners strive to be polite and cheerful to one another.

�Assurances � Contented partners continue to announce their love, commitment, and regard for each other.

�Sharing tasks � Contented partners do their fair share of household chores.

�Openness � Contented partners share their thoughts and feelings with one another.

�Support � Contented partners provide comfort and advice when they�re needed.