When people think about personal relationships, questions about stability and change jump into mind. An individual's behavior in current relationships is often explained by invoking similar relationships from the past. Feelings about one's present-day relationships reflect not so much current circumstances as the manner in which those circumstances are perceived to have improved or deteriorated. Hopes, fears, fantasies, and goals for future relationships tend not to be conceived in a vacuum, but rather are couched in terms of the present and the past. Among the most common questions that we, as relationship researchers, get from our acquaintances and students are questions about how to avoid repeating the mistakes and misfortunes of past relationships in subsequent relationships (which probably accounts for the widespread appeal of this same question in popular media).

The compelling interest in questions about stability and change evidenced by the lay public is matched by researchers interested in the scientific study of personal relationships. It is not surprising, therefore, that when the International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships decided to sponsor a series of edited volumes on timely, cuttingedge theory and research, continuity and change in personal relationships were identified as a preeminent issue. The chapters collected in this volume testify to the intellectual vigor with which scholars have sought to unravel the complex processes and associations that contribute to relationship stability and change.

A scaffold is a temporary structure built to support workers as they erect a new structure, or repair, reinforce, or demolish an existing one. Individuals and their distinctive personalities, emotions, and cognitions provide the scaffolding for change and stability in relationships. There is a continually evolving dynamic association between the factors that characterize individuals and those that define their relationships. The mental models, emotional history, and personality that individuals bring to their relationships create a context that promotes certain relational outcomes while discouraging others; these outcomes, in turn, affect the actors' personal qualities in numerous respects. Although the term “personality” is difficult to define, several contemporary approaches emphasize the characteristics that facilitate individuals' adaptation to the environment. Adapting to the social environment is, of course, one of life's most important and challenging tasks. Thus, studies of those dimensions of personality – and their manifestations in thoughts, feelings, and behavior – that regulate interpersonal relationships are likely to provide important insights into the processes of stability and change. The growing evidence that many genetically determined individual differences are designed to address common adaptive situations faced during human evolution (which, of course, prominently included interpersonal situations), and that other genetic differences interact with features of the environment in shaping the individual, testifies to the centrality of relationship-relevant personality factors in studying the processes of stability and change.

People's understanding of relationships is best considered as a work in progress, amenable to revision by experience, especially experience in current relationships.

Relationships, as defined by Robert Hinde (1979), consist of “intermittent interaction between two people, involving interchanges over an extended period of time.” This definition highlights the importance of examining the behaviors that comprise social interaction, as well as the cognitive and emotional processes that underlie and give meaning to these behaviors. The chapters in this section explore processes involved in interaction between relationship partners and the effects of these processes. Although often bypassed by researchers who instead focus on partners' self-reported affects and cognitions, behavior is nevertheless the linchpin of the relational system because it is through the processes of interacting and communicating that individuals relate to each other. Communication, one class of interaction behavior with special importance for ongoing relationships, is emphasized in several chapters. As readers will see, although all communication is behavior, not all behavior involves communication.

In the first chapter, Roloff and Johnson offer a new twist on an oftstudied behavior: arguing. They begin by noting that although researchers typically treat couples' arguments as limited in scope and duration, many arguments reoccur and may extend over lengthy intervals. These extended conflict episodes are referred to as “serial arguments.” Drawing on previous research to theorize about the antecedents and consequences of serial arguing, Roloff and Johnson lay a foundation for further studies by first defining serial arguments and then explicating their key elements. The authors' careful synthesis of the literature demonstrates the value of examining stability and change in couples' disagreements.

To fully understand personal relationships, one must attend to the context in which those relationships exist. Context, as we use this term, includes both proximal factors – i.e., the larger social network in which the dyadic relationship is embedded – and distal factors – i.e., cultural-historical factors that influence the dyad. The impact of the former, although commonly noted, is seldom investigated. It is readily apparent, however, that dyadic relationships rarely, if ever, exist in a social vacuum; instead, they are linked to wider social networks by virtue of the partners' participation in multiple dyadic relationships. As for the latter, only recently have relationship researchers begun to consider the moderating role that cultural-historical contexts may play. Some of this impact is based on technological innovation. For example, advances in medicine and social hygiene throughout the twentieth century (e.g., birth control, standards of gynecological care that allow women to enjoy sexual intercourse without pain) have radically altered the nature of sexuality in relationships. Similarly, developments in communication technology, beginning with the telephone and extending more recently to the Internet, afford opportunities to maintain and even initiate relationships without or with limited face-to-face contact.

Sprecher, Felmlee, Orbuch, and Willetts begin this section by making a strong case for the importance of social networks and their influence on personal (dyadic) relationships. After reviewing prior work, these authors offer a detailed, far-reaching analysis of how and why network processes may influence stability and change in premarital, marital, and other committed relationships.