Dyadic distance: From the inside story to a conceptual model

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.