There are many methodological approaches to researching close relationships. One can interview, observe, or follow real couples over time. One can match up strangers in a laboratory setting, creating artificial relationships and then examining their responses to different factors manipulated in an experiment. One can also survey individuals about their views, experiences, and beliefs about close relationships in general. We believe that all of these approaches (and others besides) can and should be used to investigate and validate a broad theory of close relationships such as the minding theory.

We have only begun to subject our theory to empirical testing. In this chapter we review three of our own studies that have attempted to explore aspects of the minding theory of relationships. We emphasize that this work is rather preliminary in nature, but still presents some evidence about the dynamics of close relationships that we believe to be important.

DO PEOPLE RECOGNIZE WELL-MINDED RELATIONSHIPS?

If our minding theory explains how satisfying and intimate relationships are maintained over time, then people who are in these relationships should display the behaviors we recommend. Minding behaviors should be associated, then, with good relationships. Since most individuals have, at some time or other, observed what seem to be healthy, long-term relationships, they should also have observed some of these behavior patterns and should have come to associate them with good relationships.

We hypothesized, therefore, that individuals in the general population would be more likely to judge a relationship as a good one if they observed one or more of the minding components within it.