ABSTRACT
MONTGOMERY reports the current consensus that intimate dyads— marriages or friendships—are, when successful, characterized by a high degree of mutual influence, resulting in the generation of private cultures and shared systems of meaning that impart to dyad members their senses of unique connection. As she indicates, this understanding is not new, but it would seem to have become consensual. Researchers can now begin to build upon, extend, and probe the implications of this foundation, rather than stabbing about adding to the discipline’s already disparate literature (see Stephen, 1990). After devising reliable measures of a private culture’s breadth and depth, this perspective should be pushed as far as possible. This can be done by identifying processes that facilitate or impede the development of a private culture, by mapping the rules that influence its construction (e.g., under what circumstances might a private culture be expected to be more the product of one partner than the other), and by examining relationships between it and other important social and individual variables. This agenda is clear, of considerable practical and theoretical relevance, and achievable. Thus the outlook for research on communication and intimacy is good, provided that it can stay on its theoretical track.
