Abstract
In the latter part of the 20th century, the sharing of personal feelings and information has become the hallmark of a close relationship. In North America, the gradual exchange of intimate information about one’s inner self is considered the major process through which relationships between people develop. Most theories of relational growth equate the development of relationships with the exchange of increasingly more intimate information (Bochner, 1983). Although such theoretical work stresses the centrality of self-disclosure (e. g., Altman & Taylor, 1973), very little recent research has actually examined what function self-disclosure has in established relationships. One classic exception to this rule is the work of Komarovksy (1964) who shows that self-disclosure and open communication, although central to satisfactory functioning in some marriages, are clearly not all that important to couples in many stable blue-collar marriages. The degree to which self-disclosure and expressiveness in communication between partners is vital to marital functioning in various other social class groupings remains an open question.
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Fitzpatrick, M.A. (1987). Marriage and Verbal Intimacy. In: Derlega, V.J., Berg, J.H. (eds) Self-Disclosure. Perspectives in Social Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3523-6_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3523-6_7
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