What is intimacy, and what happens in intimate relationships? Our ideas about the nature of marital relationships have changed enormously over the course of the past few decades. Where once we looked to marriage primarily for security, caretaking and the raising of our offspring, we now expect love, sex, emotional support, gratification of our needs and a sense of perfect togetherness. This is a tall order for any set of marital partners! We ask a great deal of each other, and the truth is that the greater the burdens placed upon close relationships, the more stressed and fragile they become.

In this book, I weave the fascinating stories of the partners I interview into a general discussion of the important theoretical issues of marriage. I explore the interactions within each couple’s relationship, and the ways in which the mates’ pre-existing psychological and cultural histories are typically affecting them in subtle and often unnoticed ways.

Contemporary couples are attempting to cope with vast changes in societal patterns - e.g., the widespread existence of “alternatives to marriage,” such as living together before marrying or splitting up. In Intimate Partners, I discuss the ways in which people inevitably bring to a relationship different expectations and values—dreams and visions often based more on wishes and romanticized fantasies than on what reality can offer. Very importantly, I describe the formidable power of the past—the tendency of mates to resurrect, in their current-day relationships, unresolved dilemmas carried over from their families of origin.

Last, but certainly not least, I talk about the ways in which a distressed couple often manages to deflect their difficulties onto a third party—an “impossible” in-law, an “unmanageable” child, or a friend, a lover, even a boss. Not only do I discuss the problematic patterns that can crystallize in close relationships, but I offer some practical, down-to-earth suggestions for resolving them. Finally, let me say that in the course of researching, interviewing couples and writing this book, I learned a great deal about marriage: Not only about other people’s marriages but about my own!