Communication Traits of Happy Couples Essay -- Relationships

There are couples who are happy and there are those who are not. The success rate of marriages in America has fallen; fifty percent of all marriages will not make it to the end. Fifty percent of all marriages today, who enter into a â€Å"lifelong† commitment, will end in divorce. In search of a solution and an explanation researchers have turned to look at couples who are happy and those who are not, through all stages of a relationship. They have found that many of the traits that begin in a dating relationship will carry over into a marriage. Researchers have turned to the ways in which these happy couples communicate and the ways that not so happy couples communicate in order to find a common thread between couples who stay committed to one another while being satisfied in the relationship. There are communicative traits practiced by these couples who are happy. Those traits include but are not limited to successful conflict resolution, communicative responses to situati ons which threaten your relationship, the use of rituals to build relational quality and intimacy, the role of affection in relational satisfaction. There is a correlation between successful conflict resolution and relational satisfaction in a relationship. It is important to note that not only is it important for conflicts to be resolved in a relationship but the way in which those conflicts are handled has a direct effect on the satisfaction and the success of the relationship or the marriage. It often times is not the subject matter of the fight which affects the relationship the most, it is the way in which the conflict is handled, â€Å"How couples argue and disagree about issues appears to be more consequential to the success of a marriage than what they ar... ...d and Dating Relationships,† 256. Kennedy-Lightsey, Booth-Butterfield, â€Å"Responses to Jealousy Situations That Evoke Uncertainty in Married and Dating Relationships,† 256. Kennedy-Lightsey, Booth-Butterfield, â€Å"Responses to Jealousy Situations That Evoke Uncertainty in Married and Dating Relationships,† 256. Kennedy-Lightsey, Booth-Butterfield, â€Å"Responses to Jealousy Situations That Evoke Uncertainty in Married and Dating Relationships,† 258. Angela Hoppe-Nagao, Stella Ting-Toomey, â€Å"Relational Dialectics and Management Strategies in Marital Couples,† Southern Communication Journal 67 (2002): 151. Hoppe-Nagao, Ting-Toomey, â€Å"Relational Dialectics and Management Strategies in Marital Couples,† 151. Kory Floyd, â€Å"Human Affection Exchange: V. Attributes of the Highly Affectionate,† Communication Quarterly 50 (2002): 135.