ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on neither the public nor the private, but on the interconnection between the two, exploring the flow and interrelationship between them, which illuminates the continuities and interactions between individual experience and the broader context of social structure. It provides further reflection on the way in which public perception constitutes personal experience and vice versa. However, a growing number of sociologists and therapists working in the field of marriage and family relationships yearn for a greater dialogue, each recognizing the value of widening their observations—that private lives have public significance, and, correlatively, that social trends have individual consequences. In considering the complex interplay between changes in marriage, in marital agencies, and in society as a whole, David Morgan comments that: it is often maintained that marriage has become more of a "private" relationship; indeed this is part of the distinction between institution and relationship.
