In this now-classic book on intimate relationships, the author explains the underlying architecture of marriage—the hows and whys of romantic attraction; the forming of bonded relationship, and how those relationships shift and change over the course of the marital cycle. Scarf discusses, in jargon-free prose, what causes us to choose the partners we choose and what factors tend to affect the ways in which the relationship develops. Most importantly, she writes about what causes some marriages to endure while others splinter apart.

From its very outset, Intimate Partners takes a penetrating look at the deep scaffolding of love. In Chapter One, we meet a young pair in the earliest phase of their marriage; and in succeeding chapters we meet other couples, at varying stages of the life-span. The author writes compellingly about the ways in which such issues as power-and-control, and intimacy-and-autonomy, exert fateful effects upon the patterns of the couple’s partnership. Among the many topics explored here are the role of sex; the impact of children; and above all, the power that each person’s past, in his or her family of origin, exerts on the couple’s present-day life.

Scarf looks backward in order to look forward. That is, she analyzes the ways in which unconscious expectations and patterns of relating—imported into the here-and-now from their earliest experiences—are often the primary source of conflict in many partners’ relationships. She also shows how emotional triangles—which may involve a child, an in-law, a boss or some other outsider—are often used by intimate partners to handle tensions within the marriage itself.

What can a couple do to understand the basic scaffolding of their marriage—and to make any desired changes and improvements? The author shows how to construct a genogram—a roadmap of each partner’s inherited emotional history—in order to better understand issues that are arising in the present. And in a section of the book devoted to several sets of simple tasks, she sets out some easy exercises that intimate partners can use to resolve tension and conflict, and to change the very nature of the world they share.