This thought-provoking volume offers an innovative and intriguing approach to the study of long-distance relationships. Author Laura Stafford examines romantic long-distance relationships and then expands the conception of long-distance relationships to include other relational types. She summarizes literature across the social sciences on various types of long-distance relationships and extracts themes and patterns across the relational types. In so doing, she reconsiders approaches to and offers an expanded vision of relational maintenance.
By expanding her scope beyond romantic relationships, Stafford includes those that span residences and relational types, such as noncustodial parent-child and geographically and residentially separated adult children and parents. She contends that face-to-face interaction is not necessary to maintain healthy relationships, and questions the assumption that maintaining, rather than terminating, a particular relationship is always best for the involved parties.
With its interdisciplinary approach to challenging commonly held assumptions about communication and close relationships, "Maintaining Long-Distance and Cross-Residential Relationships" will be engaging reading for scholars in communication, psychology, sociology, mass communication, and family studies. It is also appropriate for special topics graduate courses on long-distance relationships and human communication, and will serve as a unique supplemental text for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in interpersonal, relational, and family communication and family studies.

"Communication and Relational Maintenance" addresses the question, "How do people maintain their personal relationships?" Unlike the published works in this field that focus on relationship initiation or dissolution, this volume discusses the everyday processes used to maintain an on-going relationship. It discusses interpersonal communication, social-psychological factors relevant to maintenance, and the resolution of conflict. It focuses on everyday processes used to sustain personal relationships. It analyzes how communication skills affect relationship function. It discusses factors promoting marital stability and satisfaction. It elaborates upon the means and mechanisms for conflict resolution. It identifies dialectical approaches to the study of relationships.