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Article Excerpt
Friendships are a significant source of happiness in people's lives, yet friends often take one another for granted (Fehr, 1996, 2000). Wiseman (1986) described friendship as fragile because there is little societal pressure for friends to maintain or repair their relationships. Similarly, Canary, Stafford, Hause, and Wallace (1993) found that although people reported using many of the same maintenance behaviors with friends, romantic partners, and family members, less maintenance was reported in friendships. Yet prosocial behaviors such as shared activity, self-disclosure, and supportiveness appear to be key ingredients associated with emotional closeness and relational satisfaction in friendships (Afifi, Guerrero, & Egland, 1994; Bippus & Rollin, 2003; Fehr, 2000).
Cross-sex friendships, which are becoming more prevalent and significant within people's social networks (Fehr, 1996; Monsour, 2002), may be particularly fragile and difficult to maintain (Werking, 1997). Rose (1985) found that people generally report engaging in less maintenance behavior in cross-sex friendships than same-sex friendships. Cross-sex friendship can be complicated, with ambiguity about the potential romantic or sexual nature of the relationship creating uncertainty. As Dainton, Zelley, and Langan (2003) observed, 'For heterosexual individuals, maintaining a cross-sex friendship involves the affection, companionship, intimacy, and assistance found in same-sex relationships, but it also involves downgrading sexuality' (p. 91). Sometimes, however, one or both of the friends may want the friendship to turn romantic. Sexuality may then begin to be emphasized. By contrast, individuals in cross-sex friendships may downgrade sexuality more than usual when one of the friends is in the position of rejecting romance. Indeed, promoting or discouraging movement toward romance is likely to be an important and sometimes difficult part of relational maintenance in cross-sex friendships, especially when cross-sex friends have different romantic intentions and experience uncertainty about the state of their relationship.
The present study explores how romantic intention (or the lack thereof), biological sex, and uncertainty associate with maintenance behavior in cross-sex friendships. Four types of cross-sex friendships are examined--mutual romance (the participant believes that both s/he and the friend want the friendship to turn romantic), strictly platonic (the participant believes that both s/he and the friend want the relationship to stay platonic), desires romance (the participant wants the relationship to turn romantic but perceives that the friend does not), and rejects romance (the participant does not want the relationship to turn romantic but perceives that the friend does). Because men and women often perceive cross-sex friendships differently (Dainton et al., 2003; Rose, 1985), we also examine how reported use of maintenance behavior varies as a function of sex and the interaction between sex and friendship type. Finally, due to ambiguity about romantic intent, some cross-sex friends are likely to experience high levels of relational uncertainty (Afifi & Burgoon, 1998), which could inhibit their use of prosocial maintenance behavior (Dainton, 2003). Thus, we investigate whether people in cross-sex friendships differ in relational uncertainty as a function of romantic intent, as well as whether there are associations between uncertainty and maintenance behavior in cross-friendships.
Relational Maintenance as a Dynamic Process
A central assumption guiding this paper is that maintenance is a dynamic process that involves adapting to the changing needs and goals that characterize a relationship. Dindia (1994, 2003) proposed that maintenance behaviors are multiphasic; in other words, the same behavior can be used to accomplish varied goals across different phases of a relationship. For example, positivity can be used as an impression management strategy in the beginning stages of a relationship, as a routine maintenance behavior in established relationships, and as a repair strategy after a conflict or relationship problem has occurred. Similarly, we contend that cross-sex friends can use maintenance behaviors in an attempt to maintain the status quo, move the friendship into a new romantic phase, or discourage the friend from pursuing a romantic relationship. By engaging in behaviors that help accomplish these goals, cross-sex friends enhance their chances of sustaining a comfortable and satisfying relationship.
Relational maintenance has been defined in terms of different goals or relational outcomes. Dindia and Canary (1993; Dindia, 2003) identified four common conceptualizations of maintenance: keeping a relationship in existence, keeping a relationship in a specified state or stable condition, keeping a relationship satisfying, and keeping a relationship in repair. Dindia (2003) argued that the second definition--keeping the relationship in a stable condition--seems at odds with dialectic perspectives on maintenance (e.g., Baxter & Simon, 1993) that focus on adapting to changing needs (or dialectical tensions) within a relationship. However, Dindia noted that the term relational maintenance 'need not imply that a relationship is static and unchanging' (p. 3). On the contrary, keeping a relationship stable and satisfying often requires coping effectively with change. We take the position that relational maintenance encompasses all four of the definitions reviewed by Dindia and Canary, with partners adjusting to different situations by either maintaining the status quo or changing the relationship based on their goals and desires. If partners are ineffective in adapting to changing goals, the relationship is more likely to become dissatisfying or to end. Thus, our perspective privileges the position that maintenance behaviors maximize the satisfaction level within relationships (to the extent possible given the circumstances), with behaviors that stabilize or change a relationship defined as maintenance as long as they contribute to sustaining the relationship.
Maintenance in Cross-Sex Friendship
Research on cross-sex friendship suggests that people engage in different behaviors depending on their goals for the relationship. For example, Messman, Canary, and Hause (2000) demonstrated that cross-sex friends in platonic relationships avoid flirting with one another as a way of maintaining the status quo and preventing the relationship from turning romantic. Afifi and Burgoon (1998) found that cross-sex friends avoid talking about sensitive issues (such as the state of their relationship) if they worry that such talk could threaten the existence of their friendship. Of course, enacting appropriate and effective maintenance behavior may be most complicated in situations where opposite-sex friends are at cross purposes, with one friend feeling dissatisfied because he or she wants romance, and the other partner trying to maintain the status quo or reject the friend's advances without ruining the friendship.
O'Meara (1989) discussed four challenges that cross-sex friends sometimes face, three of which are particularly relevant to the romantic tension that exists in some cross-sex friendships--the emotional bond challenge (i.e., confusing closeness and liking with romantic attachment), the public presentation challenge (i.e., having to explain the nature of the friendship to others), and the sexual challenge (i.e., negotiating the sexual boundaries of the relationship). Although most studies suggest that sexual activity is relatively rare between cross-sex friends (e.g., Fuiman, Yarab, & Sensibaugh, 1997; Messman et al., 2000), Afifi and Faulkner (2000) found that about 50% of the college population they sampled could recall having had sex with a friend at least once. They also found that having sex with a friend was associated with aversive uncertainty.
Tensions associated with these challenges likely vary depending upon perceptions of romantic intent in cross-sex friendships. As Dainton et al. (2003) claimed, 'Just as variations exist in the ways that casual daters, serious daters, and married couples maintain their relationships,' so too should there be variations based on the type of friendship people share (p. 97). Research on friendship already suggests that people maintain various types of friendships differently. For example, Rose and Serafica (1986) found that proximity (e.g., routine contact) was the most frequently mentioned maintenance behavior for casual friends. In contrast, moderate levels of affection and high levels of interaction (e.g., communication, activity) were reportedly needed to maintain relationships between close and best friends. Other studies have demonstrated that people generally report using more maintenance in same-sex friendships than cross-sex friendships (e.g., Afifi et al., 1994; Rose,...
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