Marital Communication

摘要

Douglas Kelly looks at marital communication in Western culture, focusing on communication patterns associated with daily interaction, offering various examples of defined intimacy, highlighting the challenges of marital conflict, identifying long-term couple communicative patterns over the course of the entire marriage, and exploring how couples can and do engage in destructive and restorative patterns throughout their married life. The key strength of Kelly's work centers upon interview excerpts of married couples' experiences as they relate to the subject matter of each chapter. In addition each chapter covers the importance of established studies that emphasize how and why marital relationships are structured in Western culture, how and why they can be successful and unsuccessful unions, and the ending "final thoughts" of each chapter, which contain structural reflections and advice that married couples can use to enhance their own marital relationships.