Abstract

From the earliest days of behavioral research on romantic relationships, communication behavior has held a central place and served a defining role in the study of married couples. A tremendous amount of effort has been devoted to describing the ways that married couples interact and the implications of those interaction behaviors and patterns for individual and relational functioning. Historically, negative communication during conflict has received the lion's share of theoretical and empirical attention. There is growing recognition that a broad spectrum of negative and positive behaviors and a diversity of interaction contexts have important, unique, and interactive effects on marital functioning and stability. Recent efforts have focused on elucidating and empirically validating new models of adaptive communication patterns and refining our understanding of dysfunctional communication patterns. This chapter presents a theoretical framework for integrating the large body of work on marital communication, provides an integrative review of major research findings on communication behavior in marriage with particular emphasis placed on recent developments, and suggests directions for future research.