ABSTRACT
Both women and men form intimate relationships, and both sexes end some of those relationships. That much the sexes share. What they may not share is how they experience relationships, the reasons they are satisfied or dissatisfied with those relationships, and the ways they engage in ending relationships. In this chapter, we explore what is known about women’s and men’s and masculine and feminine understandings of close relationships, both when they are working well and when they are not. In the pages that follow, we discuss research that gives us insights into the somewhat different ways that the sexes and genders, in general, define and respond to relationship distress.
