Introduction to special section on the bright side of the couple relationship: Pro-relationship processes in response to positive and negative events

Abstract

Partners in couple relationships inevitably encounter positive and negative events in their everyday lives: the ways they respond to such events have relevant effects on their personal and relational well-being. Within partners’ responses to positive and negative events, this special section focuses on partners’ pro-relationship processes regarded as those processes aimed at promoting partners’ relational well-being. Such a focus responds to recent calls to examine the ‘bright side’ of the couple relationship to come to a more complete understanding of how relationships resist to adversities as well as how they strive and flourish. In this special section, we equated the ‘bright side’ of the couple relationship not just with the positive (vs. negative) events couples might face, and not even with the inherent quality of the process responding to such events (positive vs. negative processes), but with the pro-relationship effects that each process might have in the specific context examined. In this special section of Family Science, nine articles analyze innovative aspects of processes traditionally studied in the close relationship literature (i.e. communication, disclosure, support, commitment, and conflict) as well as the role of newer individual processes (i.e. savoring and self-forgiveness) examined in their effects on the couple relationship. Findings are discussed in terms of the understanding of pro-relationship processes in response to positive and negative events as well as in terms of the implications for couple relationship interventions.