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It is widely acknowledged that social relationships unfold across multiple time-scales. For example, social interactions that take place over moments, hours, or days also shape relationship change and outcomes over months, years, and even decades. These processes likely unfold in the reverse direction as well: experiences over longer-term timeframes may shape how people interact on a moment-to-moment basis. The increasing availability of intensive longitudinal data and measurement burst designs, as well as creativity in the contexts and modes of data collection--including social media, text messages, and event-contingent sampling--have exploded the possibilities for advancing knowledge on social relationships across multiple time-scales. The aim of this issue is to forward methodological innovations, empirical findings, and future directions in relationship science through the study of social and personal relationships across multiple time-scales.

Self-compassion is a positive psychological construct associated with heightened well-being, but the construct is largely measured via self-report. In a study of divorcing adults ( N = 120), we sought to replicate and extend prior research on the association between self-rated and observed self-compassion, the linguistic cues associated with self-rated and observed self-compassion, and the predictive utility of observed self-compassion. Untrained observers rated participants’ stream-of-consciousness recordings about their marriage and separation experience. We found adequate consensus among raters of observed self-compassion and a significant, positive association between self-rated and observed self-compassion. Greater self- and observer-rated self-compassion were associated with less distress at baseline; however, only observed self-compassion was associated with less distress at the final study assessment. Discussion centers on the cues observers use to perceive self-compassion in others and the extent to which behavioral manifestations of affect may shape such ratings.

Marital disruption is associated with increased risk for a range of poor health outcomes, including disturbed sleep. This report examines trajectories of actigraphy-assessed sleep efficiency following marital separation as well as the extent to which daily social behaviors and individual differences in attachment explain variability in these trajectories over time. One hundred twenty-two recently-separated adults ( N = 122) were followed longitudinally for three assessment periods over 5 months. To objectively assess daily social behaviors and sleep efficiency, participants wore the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) during the day (for one weekend at each assessment period) and an actiwatch at night (for 7 days at each assessment period). Greater time spent with an ex-partner, as assessed by the EAR, was associated with decreased sleep efficiency between participants ( p = .003). Higher attachment anxiety was also associated with decreased sleep efficiency ( p = .03), as was the EAR-observed measure of “television on.” The latter effect operated both between ( p = .004) and within participants ( p = .005). Finally, study timepoint moderated the association between EAR-observed television on and sleep efficiency ( p = .007). The current findings deepen our understanding of sleep disturbances following marital separation and point to contact with an ex-partner and time spent with the television on as behavioral markers of risk.

Divorce is a stressful life event that is associated with increased risk for poor mental and physical health. A key goal for research in this area is to understand individual differences in who fares well or poorly over time, and whether behavioral markers of risk immediately after a separation predict longer term adjustment. This article investigates psychological distress in a sample of separated adults ( N = 134, 84 of whom completed all follow-up assessments) who participated in an initial study and a follow-up assessment approximately 4.5 years later. Using multiple regression we examined whether two linguistic behaviors—the use of words from categories such as first-person pronouns and present tense words (verbal immediacy) and first-person plural pronouns (we-talk; e.g., “we” or “our”)—predicted self-reported psychological distress at follow-up. Increased use of first-person plural pronouns predicted greater psychological distress 4.5 years after marital separation. Additional analyses revealed that this effect was driven largely by differences in self-concept disturbance over time. The extent to which people use first-person plural pronouns following marital separation predicts increased risk for psychological distress years later, and this behavioral indicator may identify people who are at greater risk for poor adjustment over time.

Using a Brunswik lens framework, this study examined whether lay observers could accurately detect participants’ attachment to a former partner following romantic breakup or divorce. We predicted that the ratings of post-breakup attachment (completed after reading participants’ transcribed stream-of-consciousness discussions of the recent separation) would be associated with participants’ self-reported ratings of attachment to a former partner and that participants’ natural language use in their narratives would act as the behavioral residue explaining these associations. To enhance the generalizability of our findings, we explored our hypotheses in two samples of adults who had recently undergone romantic relationship dissolutions—people experiencing non-marital breakups ( N = 161) and divorce ( N = 132). Consistent with hypotheses, in both samples, naïve judges generated assessments of participant attachment that were (a) reliable, (b) strongly associated with participants’ own attachment ratings, and (c) associated with participant breakup-related distress. Of the linguistic cues we examined as behavioral residue, only we-talk (first person plural pronoun use) operated indirectly to link rater and participant attachment scores. We discuss the implications of this work for a deeper understanding of attachment to former romantic partners and for using person-perception paradigms to study attachment relationships.

Relationship satisfaction is crucial for health and happiness. In the absence of physical contact, people in long-distance romantic relationships (LDRs) may use alternate means of maintaining relationship satisfaction, such as mentally activating feelings of closeness to their partners. This experiment examined the effects of relational savoring, relative to two control conditions, on emotion and relationship satisfaction following a laboratory-based stress task, among 533 people in an LDR. Relational savoring yielded greater positive emotion among participants, particularly those with medium to high baseline relationship satisfaction. Further, emotional state mediated the link between relational savoring and post-stressor relationship satisfaction for participants with average or higher baseline satisfaction. Savoring relational memories resulted in short-term benefits among people in LDRs with average or higher satisfaction. The promise of relational savoring as a brief intervention is discussed as well as the implications of the results for couples in LDRs.

Answers to questions at the interface of health, emotion, and relationships (HER) are critical for intervening in medical and social ills ranging from heart disease to aggression. The articles in this special issue report on recent research that targets the HER interface and summarize talks that were given at the 2011 mini-conference of the International Association for Relationship Research held at the University of Arizona. The articles present interdisciplinary approaches for tackling the complexity of HER processes across different relationships, levels of analysis, health domains, and methodologies. The papers report on many new findings but also highlight unanswered (and unasked) questions. In doing so, this work points to areas that are ripe for future cross-disciplinary discussion and investigation.