<p>Maintaining particular interpersonal distances represents a basic way in which people satisfy needs for both privacy and affiliation. Nevertheless, the size of these distances vary substantially from one interaction to another. The current study investigates the extent to which variance in these distances can be attributed to: (a) the person initiating an interaction, (b) the person with whom they are speaking, and/or (c) their unique relationship to one another. Using a round-robin design, 34 groups of 3-6 participants took turns engaging in brief dyadic interactions, and the distance between each pair was recorded. A social relations analysis revealed that the actor was by far the largest source of variance in these distances, indicating that some individuals interacted with everyone at larger distances and others interacted with everyone at smaller distances. Follow-up analyses indicated that this tendency was most associated with higher extraversion, warmth, and attractiveness. A statistically significant (though substantially smaller) amount of relationship variance was also observed, with uniquely close distances predicted by the perceived attractiveness of the partner and the perceived integrity of the actor. In contrast, there was little evidence of partner variance regarding these distances. As the first study to employ the social relations model (SRM) to study interpersonal distance preference, this work offers an important initial step towards estimating the relative influence of these distinct sources of variance on proxemic behavior.</p>