A many-to-many relationship management system. In an object persistence management system, a many-to-many relationship manager can include one or more related objects; a junction table storing relationships between the related objects; and, one or more corresponding links. Each link can correspond to one of the objects. Furthermore, each link can persist state information for the corresponding object in an associated object table. Finally, each link can manage the junction table responsive to changing relationships with others of the related objects. Importantly, as the present invention distributes the management of the junction table, a counter-operation management protocol can be provided which can resolve conflicts which arise in the management of the junction table in response to changing relationships among their associated objects.