Given that male-female friendships lack institutional guidelines or scripts to guide everyday interactions, sustaining these relationships can be complicated. Although researchers have recently begun to study relational maintenance patterns in cross-sex friendships, no study has yet to investigate sex's and dating status's direct influences on friendship maintenance. This investigation seeks to add to the field's academic understanding of these personal relationships. Specifically, the researcher sought to uncover the associations between 10 friendship maintenance behaviors, past sexual contact, valence of past sexual contact, and cross-sex friends' dating statuses. Quantitative data were collected from 277 participants at a large Southeastern university using a survey methodology. Overall, results indicate that patterns of relational maintenance do differ as a function of friendship level, past sexual involvement, valence of past sexual involvement, and cross-sex friends' dating statuses. Past sexual involvement associates with higher levels of relationship talk, avoidance of negativity, and flirting. In addition, valence of past sexual activity varies across friendship level and associates with higher levels of positivity and flirting. Lastly, dating status significantly affects 3 of the 10 maintenance behaviors: routine contact and activity, flirting, and humor. Linear, quadratic, and cubic relationships were found for these variables, respectively. Implications of results, limitations, and recommendations for future research are discussed.

With more opportunities available to men and women to interact, both professionally and personally (i.e., the workplace, educational setting, community), friendships with members of the opposite sex are becoming more common. Increasingly, researchers have noted that one facet that makes cross-sex friendships unique compared to other types of relationships (i.e. romantic love, same-sex friendships, familial relationships), is that there is the possibility and opportunity for a romantic or sexual relationship to manifest. Communication research has yet to investigate how one decides whether to begin a romantic or sexual relationship or choose to remain platonic with their cross-sex friend. Given that cross-sex friendships deal with a lot of ambiguity regarding the nature of the friendship, this researcher sought to uncover what factors determine whether parties reciprocate romantic or sexual interest or opt to remain platonic through the theoretical lens of interaction adaptation theory. Specifically, the researcher sought to determine what expectations and desires predict compensation or reciprocity of romantic or sexual desires. At a large Southeastern university, quantitative data were collected from 307 participants. The results indicated that of the variables, Not Attracted, Incompatibility, and closeness were significant predictors of romantic reciprocation. In the case of 'friends with benefit' relationships, the results indicated that of the variables, Not Attracted, Sexual/Romantic Potential, sex, and sexual attitudes were significant predictors of sexual reciprocity. Further explanations of results, limitations, and future directions for research are discussed.

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