Maintenance Behaviors in Same-Sex and Marital Relationships: A Matched Sample Comparison

This study is follow-up to Haas and Stafford’s (1998) initial exploration of communi-cative relationship maintenance behaviors in gay and lesbian relationships. This in-vestigation is an attempt to explore relationship maintenance behaviors of ongoing, same-sex relationships through direct comparison with those used in heterosexual marriages. Using a community-based sample, 30 married heterosexuals from a larger study on maintenance were matched with 30 gay and lesbian individuals in ongoing romantic relationships on 4 criteria: age, sex, education level, and length of relation-ship. All participants completed an open-ended questionnaire assessing communica-tion behaviors used in maintaining their intimate relationships. Responses were coded for maintenance behaviors that have emerged in previous research (i.e., Ca