ABSTRACT
The quality and stability of marriage has important consequences for our society and for the physical and emotional well-being of spouses and their children. Understanding the factors that give rise to variability in marital functioning is therefore important, particularly because interventions for couples and families will be more effective to the extent they are based on sound empirical findings. In their quest to clarify the nature and course of marital functioning, researchers have focused heavily on communication and on the behaviors that spouses exchange, and more specifically on interpersonal conflict and the behaviors displayed in those situations in which spouses hold incompatible goals or differing opinions. But how important is conflict and the management of conflict in determining the course and outcome of marriage? Do the data indicate that conflict warrants a central and dominant role in our models of marriage and marital intervention? The purpose of this chapter is to address these questions, and more generally to take stock of the research literature on marital conflict and to identify gaps in the field. In doing so we first show briefly that conflict does enjoy special status as a concept of central importance in research on marriage. We then offer some reasons why we believe it is valuable to reevaluate the significance accorded to marital conflict in the field, and we suggest some ways in which our understanding of the interpersonal processes that give rise to differing marital outcomes can be refined and, more important, revised.
