ABSTRACT
Themost common reason for which people seek professional help is relationship problems (Veroff, Kulka, & Douvan, 1981), and poor communication is the relationship problem most frequently identified by couples (Broderick, 1981). Marital therapists also rate dysfunctional communication as the most frequent and damaging problem they confront in their work with couples (Geiss & O’Leary, 1981). Not surprisingly, a great deal of research has been conducted on communication in marriage. For example, a PsychINFO (1967-2002) search using the key words marital and communication yields 2,062 entries, whereas the same search of Sociofile (1974-2002) turns up 416 entries. Similar searches using the key words love andmarital yield 501 and 213 references, respectively. Although we cannot read too much into these figures without a more detailed analysis of the content of the papers, it is probably safe to infer that the study of communication is a dominant theme in the marital literature.
