Advancing understanding of the mechanistic pathways underlying close relationships and physical health: Conclusion to the special issue.

In the 30+ years since House, Landis, and Umberson (1988) published one of the first papers establishing links between close relationships and physical health, this subfield has blossomed substantially. Theoretical models of relationships and physical health suggest that the mechanisms underlying relationship-health pathways fall into three categories: psychological (e.g., cognitive, affective), biological, and behavioral (for a review, see Farrell & Stanton, 2019). Interestingly, some mechanisms may branch into both protective and deleterious health pathways; Crowley et al. (2020), for example, showed that support marshaling is associated with better or poorer health depending on whether the support is perceived by recipients as effective. Even within positive and negative relationship processes, further narrowing to more specific relationship processes that promote better health may be useful for finding "active ingredients" that can be targeted in future interventions. [Extracted from the article]