Scholars have identified four common components for relationship maintenance (Guerrero, Anderson, & Afifi, 2001). These components are what create and build the process of maintaining a relationship. Relational maintenance involves "keeping a relationship in existence- (p. 226); in doing this one must communicate, listen, and understand. Ayers wrote the second component, which involves keeping " a relationship in a specified state or condition, or at a stable level of intimacy, so that the status quo is maintained- (p. 226). To fulfill this component one must be open, know to self-disclose, and trust. The third component involves keeping " a relationship in satisfactory condition- (p. 226), in doing this one must be creative, affectionate, and sexually fulfilled. Lastly, relational maintenance involves keeping " a relationship in repair- (p. 226), in fulfilling this components one must accept change, know that conflict is existent, and to know how to negotiate with the other. These relational components help keep our relationships in good standing if we allow them to become the focus of our goals. To better understand relational maintenance we will elaborate on the sub-categories that fulfill each component outlined as well as integrate the results we have come to after conducting our own research and experiments.
We conducted a survey in order to investigate how married couples maintain their marriages. Forty surveys were handed out to various people in and out of campus. Of the 40 surveys only 25 were considered for the results. Nine were not received, five of the returned surveys were not qualified because of the martial status, and one was over 25 years of marriage. We counted 25 surveys of married people that ranged between being just married to 25 years. Out of the 25 people, 12 were male and 13 were female. As we conducted the survey we were surprised to find out that the seven principles of marriage introduced by scholars were not as obvious to the couples as they were to the researchers.
