The interfacial properties and rheological behavior of surfactant/polymer complex systems were measured to investigate the association behavior of the associating polymer. Compared with the pure surfactant solution, there are two inflection points in the surface tension curve for the surfactant/polymer complex systems. The two inflection points are dependent on the surfactant type and polymer concentration. The effect of surfactant on the rheological behavior of polymer can be divided into two aspects. First, the addition of short-chain betaine surfactant is detrimental to the viscosity of polymer solution due to the electrostatic shielding effect. Second, long-chain betaine surfactant also reduces the viscosity of polymer solutions at low concentrations. However, when the concentration of the long-chain betaine surfactant is relatively high, the long-chain betaine surfactant could form worm-like micelles that promote the intermolecular association and thus increase the number of associating junctions, thereby resulting in the augmentation of viscosity. So it is necessary to apply the long-chain betaine surfactant to build the polymer/surfactant flooding system. The interaction model between surfactant and polymer is proposed, which is different from the traditional ‘Three-Region Model’.