When asked to list the most important things in their lives, most people list their relationships. Good health, money, and career success eventually make the list, but friends, family, and romantic partners are typically at the top. This is no surprise. Close relationships are a source of social and emotional support, self-validation, identity expansion, encouragement, and affection.
Therefore, understanding the process by which relationships develop is important and has been of interest to relationship scholars for several decades. Of course, scholars who study the process of relationship development face a formidable task. They seek to explain how a jointly constructed, mutually enacted, and highly coordinated behavioral and emotional connection between two people emerges from the ordinary circumstances of social interaction.
This entry summarizes several approaches to explaining relationship development found in the scholarly literature, particularly the phase or stage models and turning-points analysis.
Phase or stage models of relationship development recognize that romantic couples and friendships move through and between phases at different rates of speed. Some romantic couples, for example, describe their relationship as beginning with love at first sight and accelerating quickly to a committed relationship or marriage. Others describe their relationship development as more gradual, developing a friendship first, entering a prolonged courtship, and moving slowly to marriage. And some couples that had romantic potential do not progress beyond relatively superficial interactions; they remain at the level of casual acquaintances if professional or social networks keep them in contact or they terminate the relationship entirely if no external factors necessitate continued interaction.
Thus, the goal of scholars who offer models of relationship development is not to specify how soon into the relationship any particular transition is likely to occur. Rather, their goal is to identify patterns of emotions, attitudes, and behaviors that distinguish one phase of development from the previous and the subsequent phase. The three models summarized below are widely accepted illustrations of the phases or stages of development. One of the first models concerned with the phases of development in friendships and romantic relationships was published by George Levinger in the early s.
