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Abstract

The article explores how partners in intimate relationships experience and construct the meaning of dyadic distance. It challenges the common notions that closeness and distance are two poles of a continuum and that distance can be defined as the absence of closeness. Analyses are based on detailed semistructured interviews that produce a conceptual model of dyadic distance as it relates to the overall perception of the marital relationship. The conceptual model evolved from the first-order meaning (participants' primary and immediate responses) and second-order meaning (authors' inductive conceptualization based on participant accounts of their experiences) of dyadic distance in intimate relationships.

Keywords

conceptual model distance marital relations qualitative research

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Dyadic distance: From the inside story to a conceptual model

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