Abstract
Herzfeld and co‐workers have developed a lattice model describing the coupling between self‐assembly and liquid crystalline order in aqueous solutions of amphiphilic molecules. Even for simple assembly into rod‐like aggregates of constant cross section, they find unexpectedly complex phase behavior. Here we propose a direct extension of the earlier model to incorporate soft repulsions. The main effects are illustrated for labile rod‐like aggregates. We show that the phase behavior of self‐assembling systems is very sensitive to the steepness of repulsions between particles in certain parts of the phase diagram.