Recent data verifying a substantial amount of violence in dating relationships have presented a new challenge to the romantic love model. This study, which investigates abuse between high school couples, confirms the existence of violence among younger partners and describes their reactions to those abusive events. Findings suggest that violence is viewed by participating individuals as relatively nondisruptive to the relationship and sometimes is even seen as a positive occurrence. Discussion centers on how romance and violence coexist.

In a series of five studies a method of assessing relationship thinking and its role in close relationship dynamics was developed. These studies were carried out with college students who responded to questionnaires. Studies 1 and 2 focused on identifying items representing the content and frequency of relationship thinking about participants' present dating relationships. Studies 3 and 4 examined personal characteristics, general relationship schema, and subjective conditions that were related to relationship thinking. Study 5 identified the ability of relationship thinking to predict individuals' perceptions of an interaction with their partners. Results uncovered three types of relationship thinking: partner, positive affect, and network. Relationship thinking was related in expected ways to several personal characteristics, subjective conditions, and general relationship schema. Relationship thinking was predictive of perceptions of distress‐maintaining and relationship‐enhancing interactions with the dating partners. The findings suggest increased attention to the social cognitive aspects of close relationships.

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Smoking is North America's leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality. Although effective cessation treatments exist, their overall effect is modest, and they rarely reach the high-risk, health-compromised smokers who need them most. Surprisingly, despite evidence that marital relationship variables predict the success of cessation efforts, family systems ideas have had little impact on current intervention research. We review and critique the cessation literature from a systemic viewpoint, illustrate two couple-interaction patterns relevant to the maintenance of highrisk smoking, and outline a family-consultation (FAMCON) intervention for couples in which at least one partner continues to smoke despite having heart or lung disease. Taking into account ironic processes and symptom-system fit, FAMCON focuses on the immediate social context of smoking, aiming to interrupt well-intentioned "solutions" that ironically feed back to keep smoking going, and to help clients realign important relationships in ways not organized around tobacco usage. Currently in its pilot-testing phase, FAMCON is an adjunctive, complementary approach designed to include collaboration with primary-care physicians and to make smokers more amenable to other, evidencebased cessation strategies.Smoking, the leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in the US, is a proven risk factor for a variety of health problems involving not only the smoker but also those with whom he or she interacts (Wetter, Fiore, Gritz, et al., 1998). Nevertheless, nearly a quarter of the adult population continues to smoke despite major societal efforts to discourage their doing so (CDC, 1996). Although effective cessation interventions exist, their overall effect is modest, and they often do not reach the high-risk, health-compromised smokers who need them most (Compas, Haage, Keefe, et al., 1998;Fiore, Bailey, Cohen, et al., 1996).

The results of the present study show that premarital conflict is a precursor of marital conflict and that, while it does not relate to the feelings that partners report having about one another premaritally, it does predict the extent to which they are satisfied once they have been married about two and a half years. Twenty-one newlyweds provided detailed time-ordered descriptions of their courtships, dividing them into three stages of involvement - casual dating, serious dating, and commitment to marriage. With the events of the courtship fresh in their minds, they were asked to think about the time period of each stage in turn, and to fill out a questionnaire designed to measure: (1) love, (2) ambivalence, (3) conflict and (4) maintenance behaviours (e.g., attempts at problem-solving). Approximately two years later they completed the same scales, as well as a measure of marital satisfaction and adjustment. Premarital conflict was generally the strongest predictor of patterns of marital involvement, but it predicted the subjective feelings of wives better than of husbands. Conflict and maintenance are strongly associated premaritally, but once couples have been married for a while there is no tendency for couples who have high conflict to make greater efforts at problem-solving. The results are discussed in terms of couples' changing attributions regarding the origins of conflict.