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Article Excerpt
Managing physical distance can be difficult in all types of personal relationships. Partners cannot easily dismiss the uncertainties that arise from infrequent face-to-face interactions, and they use communicative strategies to overcome relational physical discontinuity (Sigman, 1991). Given that, as Bradac (2001) suggests, "there is a human drive to reduce uncertainty, to explain the world, and to render it predictable" (p. 456), relational partners can cultivate feelings of certainty, stability, and predictability by intentionally planning for future interactions (e.g., "We will see each other tomorrow."). Because making plans can provide relational partners with a degree of certainty, such plans may work constructively, but they also can create uncertainty, for example, when partners cannot accomplish their predetermined, interactional goals.
For this discussion, I address various functions of making plans, specifically in the context of long-distance dating relationships (LDDRs). Through analysis of LDDR couples' conversations about their relationships, I examine the partners' process of making plans through the lens of Relational Dialectics (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996). I begin by briefly reviewing the relevant literature and discussing a Relational Dialectics perspective for long-distance relating. I conclude by presenting results of an analysis where making plans emerges as a praxis strategy for negotiating certainty-uncertainty contradictions in long-distance relating.
Uncertainty and Certainty in Long-Distance Dating Relationships
Although LDDRs have gained research attention in the past 10 years, they remain an understudied (Rolhfing, 1995) and primarily atheoretical area of scholarship (Stafford, 2005). The major variables investigated in the LDDR research have been the differences between LDDRs and proximal dating relationships (PDRs) in terms of frequency and amount of contact (e.g., Schwebel, Dunn, Moss, & Rennet, 1992), maintenance strategies (Carpenter & Knox, 1986), media usage (O'Sullivan, Gurien, & Weimann, 1993), social networks (Sahlstein, 2006), and coping methods (Holt & Stone, 1988). Long-distance researchers have primarily focused on these variables in terms of how they affect relational satisfaction and stability (see Stafford for a detailed review of long-distance and cross-residential research). Some of the recent research has focused on themes of certainty and uncertainty (Dainton & Aylor, 2001; Gerstel & Gross, 1984; Sahlstein, 1996).
LDDR partners want certainty around their relationships due to the abundant gaps between their face-to-face interactions. Sahlstein (1996) reported the number of interaction rituals (i.e., any interaction recurring in fixed manner or at a fixed time or interval) positively correlated with relational satisfaction for both LDDRs and PDRs. In another study, Sahlstein's (2004) participants desired a sense of normality or certainty about their relationship and their partners. Partners engaged in communicative behaviors that would help produce certainty, for example, keeping up on each other's daily activities. In fact, Mietzner and Lin's (2005) participants reported several positive outcomes of long-distance dating experiences, including improved time management skills. LDDRs seem to call for and reinforce certainty-producing practices.
In addition to wanting certainty in their relationships, LDDR partners also describe wanting opportunities for uncertainty or spontaneity (i.e., ability to take action without plans, schedule, or prediction) that they perceive as more available within proximal relationships. Lack of spontaneity has been reported as a hindering factor in these relationships. One of Sahlstein's (1996) participants said, "If you can't just like pop over any time you are in the mood to go see the person, [then] basically you are in a long-distance relationship. It isn't as convenient to be in a long-distance relationship." Sahlstein's participants reported they had to plan their time together, and they missed spontaneously stopping by each other's homes unannounced or getting together on a whim. In their study of commuter marriages, Gerstel and Gross (1984) reported that, while marital partners want and work to produce more routines and certainty for their relationship, they also want more uncertainty or novelty in their relationships. Since much of their interaction is dictated ahead of time, the need for unpredictable activities is heightened in these relationships. Long-distance partners desire a blend of routine with spontaneous interaction.
Dainton and Aylor (2001) reported that relational uncertainty was negatively related to feelings of trust in their sample of LDDRs; participants who had some face-to-face contact were less uncertain and expressed more trust in their partners than individuals who had no face-to-face contact with their partners. Therefore, it appears face-to-face contact (i.e., predominantly predictable contact in LDDRs) decreases some forms of uncertainty. Uncertainty was perceived as uncertainty around the stability and future of the relationship, and as the authors and others have noted (e.g., Knobloch & Solomon, 2001), uncertainty can have other dimensions (e.g., uncertainty about your partner). In the case of Dainton and Aylor's study, the negative relationship between face-to-face contact and uncertainty seems reasonable; the more you see someone, the less likely you are to feel uncertain about the stability and future of the relationship. However, uncertainty can emerge in ways that do not decrease with face-to-face contact. For example, knowing more about one another's lives can highlight the separateness of the lives. During face-to-face contact, partners address difficult aspects of their relationship, which can lead to uncertainty once discussed and once their time together has ended. LDDRs, like other relational types, appear to desire and experience both certainty and uncertainty in their relationships, and a perspective that is well positioned to understand these competing (yet interrelated) concepts in LDDRs is Relational Dialectics (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996).
Making Sense of Planning Using Relational Dialectics
A Relational Dialectics perspective (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996) is a useful lens for examining simultaneous yet competing needs, such as certainty and uncertainty in LDDRs, because it assumes a dynamic interplay of relational needs (Sahlstein, 2004). These "contradictions" define relational life and constitute forces, desires, and needs that are unified yet opposed. As defined by Baxter and Montgomery (1998), "Phenomena are opposites if they are actively incompatible and mutually negate one another definitionally, logically, or functionally. At the same time, dialectical opposites are interdependent with one another." (p. 4). For example, needing and achieving relational certainty may require that particular uncertainties, such as opposition, at least temporarily vanish. At the same time, to appreciate or desire uncertainty in one's relationship or with one's partner, a person may need to feel certain about the stability of the relationship (i.e., the opposites are logically unified).
Baxter and Montgomery (1996, pp. 121-124) argue that contradictions between certainty and uncertainty can take various forms, and they articulate five radiants of possible meaning for the contradiction:
(1) [Partners] cognitively predicting the other's personality, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
(2) [Partners] make plans for the scheduling of the next meeting.
(3) The extent to which the interaction episodes of the pair are fun, exciting, and stimulating.
(4) The perceived emotional excitement of "romance."
(5) Predictability of the state of the relationship.
LDDR partners likely experience all five meanings across their relational history. Baxter and Montgomery call for more research documenting traces of the contradiction between certainty and uncertainty, which to date has not emerged as frequently as studies of other contradictions such as autonomy--connection, similarity-difference, stability--change, and dyad--community (Altman & Ginat, 1996; Baxter & West, 2003; Braithwaite & Baxter, 1995; Goldsmith, 1990).
Researchers know little about how certainty-uncertainty contradictions are managed through praxis, that is, the idea that "people are both subjects and objects of their own actions" (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996, p. 13). As partners relate with one another, "their actions in the present are constrained and enabled by prior actions and function to create conditions to which they will respond in the future" (Baxter & Montgomery, 1998, p. 9), Several praxis strategies have surfaced in relational dialectics research (e.g., denial, balance, and segmentation). Denial "represent[s] an effort to subvert, obscure, or deny the presence of a contradiction by legitimating only one dialectical force to the exclusion of countervailing ones" (Baxter & Montgomery, 1998, p. 162). For example, an LDDR partner may choose to not talk about certain friends they have to their relational partner, thus privileging closedness to avoid conflict. A second form of praxis is balance. When partners compromise between two needs, they are using balance. Marital partners experiencing a contradiction between autonomy and connection can meet each other halfway by spending time together but accomplishing independent goals (e.g., one spouse is reading while the other is watching the television; autonomy is not fully realized and connection is only partially fulfilled). Finally, LDDRs have reported using the strategy of segmentation (Sahlstein, 2004). Segmentation represents the couple pattern of alternating between opposing forces based on content or context. Gerstel and Gross (1984) reported this as compartmentalization within commuter marriages. For example, commuter couples tend to do "couple" activities when they are together (connection) and...
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