Handling the Discontinuous Aspects of Continuous Social Relationships: Toward Research on the Persistence of Social Forms

This essay describes selected features of the behavioral construction of long-term relationships. A distinction is advanced between the life history oi a social relationship and the interactional co-presence of the relationship partners. The logics of relationship-based behavior and interaction-based behavior are thus contrasted. Some social relationships are defined by their communities as continuous, that is, as extending beyond the moments when the partners are in face-to-face interaction with each other. Three spatiotemporal frameworks, in which devices for constructing the continuity of social relationships in anticipation of, during, or subsequent to periods of physical and interactional non-co-presence, are discussed. The implications of this perspective for the study of strategic communication and of the continuity of other social forms are noted.