An Analysis of
"Relationship Maintenance Strategies
and Dialectical Contradictions in
Personal Relationships"
by Natalie Wright
Introduction: 
Based on the Relational Dialectics Theory the article entitled, "Relationship Maintenance Strategies and Dialectical Contradictions in Personal Relationships" written by Eric Simon and Leslie Baxter demonstrates and supports the general guidelines for the dialectic theory. Printed in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, this article briefly outlines explanations of the dialectics involved in this theory, and further supports these explanations with an experiment conducted on 162 romantic and married couples, which will further be explained later.
Summary:
Initially within the article Baxter and Simon identify the three ideal dialectics of this theory: autonomy-connection, predictability-novelty, and openness-closedness. They believe that relationships are centered around keeping both partners satisfied with their bond and that this path is influenced by the natural pressure to change in order to maintain equilibrium within the relationship. Consequently this pressure to change is the result of these three dialectic tensions of opposing forces. This "problem-oriented repair" is an ongoing struggle of the relationship and in fact is the main cause for many relationship breakups since it is so hard to maintain an acceptable equilibrium. However, Simon and Baxter also point out that these dialectical problems are faced by many couples and are perfectly normal in a healthy relationship.
Autonomy-Connection
The autonomy-connection dialectic is referred to by Baxter and Simon as the, "primary exigence of relating" (1993, p. 227). Being the most crucial dialectic to maintain balance for a successful relationship, partners should spend much of their time relating to the other partner's needs and wants. This flux focuses on individuals in the relationship having their own autonomy (independence) and enough connection (interdependence) within the relationship. What is important here according to Baxter and Simon is that partners don't spend too much time together, causing the loss of the individual and entrapment in the relationship, or spending too much time apart, causing lack of commitment and insufficient time spent together.
Predictability-Novelty
Within this dialectic lies the key to balancing certainty and uncertainty between partners. Equal amounts of predictability and novelty are crucial to a healthy relationship otherwise the parties will either become emotionally deadened or relationally unstable. According to Simon and Baxter not many predictability-enhancing tactics, like creating a routine schedule or planning, have been well represented in relationship literature. However, they do point out that spontaneous and creative measures, such as celebrating memorable events or surprising a partner with a gift will liven-up the relationship and reduce relationship boredom.
Openness-Closedness
The final contradictory dialect that is discussed by Simon and Baxter in this article is openness-closedness. This dialectic says that openness-closedness captures the tension experienced between the two partners in what they should or shouldn't say to one another. Clearly partners have a hard time deciding what kind of information, and how much information, should be disclosed to their significant other. In fact, according to Baxter and Simon, this tension is regularly expressed in premarital settings when partners are concerned with the possibility of creating close rapport in the future with their partner, proving that the exchange of information is vital in creating and maintaining a successful and happy relationship.
Following the brief descriptions outlined above from Baxter and Simon's article, they continued their summary by stating that the central feature to these dialectical tensions is domination. They believe that one pole of the contradictory dialectic is superior over the other, which in turn motivates us to make supplementary efforts to make the two poles more equal in order to satisfy the needs of our relationship. Based on this information, Baxter and Simon formulated six hypotheses to describe this phenomenon. However, due to experimental faults, only the three hypotheses that could actually be tested are listed below.
Hypothesis 1:
There will be a stronger positive correlation between perceived partner enactment of the connection-enhancing maintenance strategy and participant satisfaction in the autonomy-dominated dialectical moment as opposed to the connection-dominated moment (Baxter & Simon, 1993, p. 231).
Hypothesis 3:
There will be a stronger positive correlation between perceived partner enactment of the novelty-enhancing maintenance strategy and participant satisfaction in the predictability-dominated moment as opposed to the novelty-dominated moment (Baxter & Simon, 1993, p. 231).
Hypothesis 6:
There will be a stronger positive correlation between perceived partner enactment of the closedness-enhancing maintenance strategy and participant satisfaction in the openness-dominated dialectical moment as opposed to the closedness-dominated moment (Baxter & Simon, 1993, p. 232).
The Experiment
After establishing the previous hypotheses, Baxter and Simon began experimental research to test them for validity. In order to this, Baxter and Simon had undergraduates in a Communication class at a western university pass out questionnaire packets to various romantic or marital couples. In total 400 packets were distributed to 200 hundred couples, one packet going to each individual (Baxter & Simon, 1993, p. 232). Participants were informed the that experiment was completely voluntary and that they were to fill out the questionnaires independently of their partner. However, due to various factors, the final number of couples that could actually be tested was 162 (p. 232). The reason this number dropped by a total of 38 couples is because some of the participants did not follow the guidelines they were given for the experiment. Also, some groups that were given the packets, such as homosexuals, were badly underrepresented for this study and therefore their information was thrown out. The remaining 162 couples consisted of 32 percent married couples and the rest were people in romantic relationships at various stages of development (p. 232).
The questionnaire consisted of four parts, the first asking for information concerning sex, age, and relationship type and length. The second part of the questionnaire asked participants to report their current level of relationship satisfaction, by utilizing Norton's measure of marital quality. The third portion asked participants to report on the issues, challenges, and difficulties of their relationship, and to also estimate their partner's perception. In this section was a list of 24 statements that aimed at representing the poles of autonomy-connectedness, predictability-novelty, and openness-closedness. The fourth and final section of the questionnaire asked respondents to indicate how characteristic the 47 maintenance behaviors were in describing their own relationship (Baxter & Simon, 1993, p. 233).
Experimental results were calculated separately for males and females, as well as separately for each of the three dialectic contradictions. However, results showed that hypotheses 1, 3, and 6 were supported by four out of six tests (Baxter & Simon, 1993, p. 238). Baxter and Simon report that the data suggests that it seemed that males and females perceived partner contact was more effective in the autonomy-dominated moment than in the connection-dominated moment, agreeing with hypothesis one. The studies also showed that romantic efforts were more effective under the conditions of excessive predictability instead of excessive novelty, adding support to hypothesis three. Furthermore, statistical analysis of this experiment also supported hypothesis six, however data showed that it is ineffective to avoid your partner under the condition of excessive closedness.
While analyzing the results of their study, Baxter and Simon state that, "all three of these maintenance strategies appear to function in specialized ways to move a relationship toward dialectical equilibrium," and their research data supports that notion (1993, p. 239). The main goal of this experiment was to examine participant satisfaction in personal relationships depending upon perceived partner maintenance strategies in different levels of autonomy-connectedness, predictability-novelty, and openness-closedness.
Personal Analysis:
Upon reading and analyzing this article, I must say that I agree with the data and hypotheses Baxter and Simon present. I feel that from the experiment tested and my own personal experience the hypotheses they propose seem logical and well supported. Comprehending the overall ideas and main points of this article was relatively simple, however I did find some difficulty trying not to get confused while reading how the information was statistically figured. The only other complaints I had about this article were the sample size used and its randomness. Stating that all relationships encounter and struggle with these three dialectics based on the data from only 162 couples out of the millions that actually exist in the world seems like a bit of a stretch. Also, is the sample they tested really that random if all of the participants were from a generalized area? Besides those few instances, I found the article quite informative and enjoyable. Baxter and Simon present some very strong points in this article and I would recommend it to anyone wishing to learn more information about the Relational Dialectics Theory.
Source:
Baxter, L., & Simon, E. (1993). Relationship Maintenance Strategies and Dialectical Contradictions in Personal Relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 10, 225-242.
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This page last updated 3/8/00.