The quality of interactions and relationships depends on the thoughts and feelings of both partners. Hence, people often try to manage the thoughts and feelings others have about them. This chapter reports the results of a program of research examining the role of interpersonal value goals – goals to be valued as a relationship partner – in interpersonal interactions and relationships. This research suggests that adopting the goal to be valued by others often motivates people to enact prosocial behaviors and adopt compassionate goals, and elicits positive responses from partners. The link between interpersonal value goals and prosocial behavior was particularly strong when participants endorsed lay theories that prosocial behavior elevates people’s interpersonal value and when they were immersed in relationship contexts in which specific partners rewarded their prosocial behavior, suggesting that selection of prosocial strategies as a means to pursue interpersonal value depends on explicit and tacit knowledge of interdependence.

Romantic relationships affect the levels of security that people generally experience with close others. Experiences with a partner carry immediate outcomes (e.g., feeling appreciated vs. ignored), but they also can have longer lasting effects when they cause people to reflect on their overall worthiness and comfort with closeness/trust toward others. Our chapter examines how such experiences shape the mental representations that underlie chronic tendencies with attachment security, and how these representations may change with new experiences in romantic involvements. We examine change through the lens of the Attachment Security Enhancement Model, which suggests that enhancing security in relationships involves both mitigating momentary insecurity and fostering more secure mental representations over the longer term. Whether partners are effective at enhancing security may depend on the strategies they enact, and optimal strategies depend on whether a person is experiencing momentary anxiety versus avoidance. Over time, partner strategies in new situations – especially those that depart from past insecure experiences (e.g., painful interactions in close relationships) – can lead to revisions of insecure mental representations (e.g., beliefs about the self, expectations of close others). Together, using strategies to manage insecure moments and create opportunities to revise insecure mental representations may enhance security across time.

Contemporary interdependence perspectives posit that intimates are more likely to remain in a relationship to the extent that they are committed to that relationship, and that they tend to be more committed to the extent that they a) are currently satisfied with the relationship, b) believe they do not currently have more desirable alternatives to the relationship, and c) have previously invested resources into the relationship. At times, though, intimates may expect that their relationship satisfaction, alternatives, and investments will increase or decrease in the future, and research on decision-making suggests that such expectations may determine their relationship commitment more than their current or past experiences do. In this chapter, we first identify factors (e.g., plans to improve the relationship, personality, gender) that may cause intimates’ expected experiences to diverge from their current experiences. Next, we review theoretical and empirical work suggesting that intimates’ relationship commitment should be determined more by their expected experiences than by their current or past experiences. Finally, we introduce a new measure of expected relationship satisfaction, alternatives, and investments designed for future research into these ideas.

Relationships are embedded in broader social networks, including the family and friends of both partners. Covering contributions from several disciplines, this chapter discusses the role of social networks in the maintenance of intimate relationships. We first describe findings from the communication field showing how people use their social networks (such as through doing activities with mutual friends) as one of several strategies to maintain their relationships. Then, we discuss social psychological literature regarding how social networks affect both dyad members’ motivation to engage in various maintenance mechanisms that follow from their decision to commit. Furthermore, the social network can be instrumental in influencing pair members’ ability to maintain their relationship, including by giving advice to help repair relationships, which is also discussed in this chapter. We then turn to more macro-level issues regarding the compositional or structural dimensions of social networks and the ways in which they play a role in the maintenance of couples’ relationships. Variation in the processes of network influence on the maintenance of relationships is also considered, including how networks differentially influence relationship maintenance across the life course and through technology (e.g., social media).

In this chapter, we discuss romantic relationship maintenance in the context of self-expansion. Overall, we review the self-expansion model and its accompanying empirical literature over the past 30 years, and consider some implications and future directions. Specifically, we begin by conceptualizing relationship maintenance, describing the self-expansion model (including both of its key principles: motivation to expand one's abilities to accomplish goals and including close others in the self), and covering some of the foundational work conducted with couples (e.g., self–other overlap and relational benefits of shared exciting activities). We then review research showing that relationship maintenance and self-expansion are positively related, and discuss potential mechanisms and theoretical underpinnings. We next explore more recent research on individual self-expansion and its implications for the maintenance of close relationships. Throughout the chapter, we provide illustrative examples of how self-expansion is associated with relationship characteristics, behaviors, maintenance, and outcomes. These examples will hopefully allow readers to better understand the concepts, theories, and empirical findings, and also allow utilization of this knowledge in real-life applications. Finally, we end with a summary and discussion of future directions for self-expansion and relationship researchers.

How do people maintain their closest relationships? In this chapter, we present an interdependence account of how people maintain their relationships with others. Interdependence theory, first articulated by Thibaut and Kelley, was formulated to explain how people choose among potential courses of action in interdependent situations featuring problems of actor coordination and decision-making. Because romantic partners are often faced with daily choices within their relationship (e.g., Should we go to the movie my partner wants to see rather than what I want to see? Should I stay in this relationship or pursue an alternate?), interdependence theory is well suited for understanding relationship maintenance processes. We begin by discussing why relationship maintenance is necessary. We then review the set of processes – behavioral and cognitive – that help keep interdependent relationships intact, despite the fact that situational actors must adapt to constantly changing situations. Central to these processes is one’s commitment to a relationship, which, once established, causes maintaining a relationship to become an automatic, default option under ordinary circumstances.