Murray and Holmes (1994) devised a creative method for exploring how people restructure past events in ways that allow them to maintain a sense of efficacy in their romantic relationships. These researchers asked people to generate narratives about their partners' previous behaviors that facilitated or disrupted the development of intimacy in the relationship. Prior to writing these stories, half the participants were told that engaging in conflict is healthy or good for the relationship, whereas the remaining half were informed that conflict is bad for the relationship. The results showed that narrators reported higher levels of conflict in their relationships when they believed conflict was good as opposed to bad. Additionally, partners' dispositional tendencies toward conflict avoidance were interpreted in a manner consistent with the perceived benefits of conflict. When narrators believed that initiating conflict was good, they made excuses for their partners' conflict avoidance and emphasized the partners' other virtues. Conversely, when narrators perceived conflict to be bad, they downplayed the negative implications of their partners’ tendencies to initiate conflict and minimized the importance of interpersonal differences. It thus appears that people want to view 14 themselves as effectively engaging in behaviors that are predictive of relationship success. This contributes to a sense of stability, predictability, and control in the relationship.