CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS RESEARCH: A RESOURCE FOR COUPLE AND FAMILY THERAPISTS

Finally, the Love Ways approach by Marston et al. (1987) emphasizes how partners communicate love to each other. Strategies rated as extremely important were such things as saying "I love you" and touching the partner (highly desired by both Kathy and Matt) as well as doing things for the partner and being supportive and understanding (both areas of needed growth for Matt). If each partner is attuned to how the other partner is showing love-and is also attuned to how they themselves are showing love-it is likely that love communication will increase.

Close relationships research also has many other theories, strategies, and measures to appeal to couple and family therapists. For example, communication is a core issue for many couples. The Self-Disclosure Index (Miller et al., 1983) is a 10-item measure that assesses self-disclosure on a variety of topics (e.g., "my worst fears"). It can be used to measure own disclosure, partner disclosure, perceived partner disclosure, and so on. Partners can use their scale results to meta-communicate in session-in other words, communicate about their own disclosure or failure to disclose. The therapist can help them discuss the process of communicating rather than deal with specific content issues, at least initially.

Another useful measure is the Relationship Assessment Scale (S. Hendrick, 1988), a 7-item measure of satisfaction. This measure correlates .80 with the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1976) and is becoming more widely used in both research and therapy. One advantage of the scale is that because of the wording, it can be used with dating, cohabiting, married, and lesbian and gay couples. Its brevity allows for frequent use in session, much like a depression measure can be used weekly or biweekly to track the course of a client's (or couple's) progress.

Measures of such constructs as respect, trust, sexual beliefs, commitment, and so on are also available for clinical use (see Duck, 1988, 1997; C. Hendrick & Hendrick, 2000).

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

This article presents my attempt to acquaint couple and family therapists with the growing field of close relationships, a field that has much to offer therapists. In addition to the topics already discussed, close relationships work on physical attractiveness and mate choice (e.g., Cunningham, Roberts, Barbee, Druen, & Wu, 1995), attributions in couples (e.g., Bradbury & Fincham, 1992), as well as other topics are very relevant to practicing therapists. Therapists, in turn, can collaborate with researchers, helping them to retain the "white heat of relevance" (Johnson, 2003) so necessary for meaningful research. For example, a therapist might ask, "Can the love styles be changed?" Let us say that the male partner in a heterosexual couple seeking therapy has Ludus as a predominant love style. The therapist might let him know that ludic behaviors are predictive of dissatisfaction and potential breakup, so if he loves his partner and wants the relationship to continue, he can make some choices about modifying his ludic tendencies, trying to be more honest and disclosing, and satisfying his needs for novelty and sensation through sports/exercise, hobbies, and so on. A female partner who is heavily pragmatic might be encouraged to develop the more passionate and altruistic parts of her love orientation to balance out her practicality. Still other concepts, such as respect, could play into gender-based struggles in a traditional couple in which the wife is trying to establish greater freedom and independence. A husband who is unlikely to respond positively to the accusation of being sexist may be more likely to "hear" that his wife does not feel respected by him. There are potentially few topics in close relationships research that would not be enriched by questions from a marriage and family therapist.