Marital relationships:
key characteristics of a successful marital relationship (Gottman and Silver, 1999):
Intimate familiarity: Couples know each other’s goals, concerns, and hopes.
Fondness and admiration: Couples who feel honor and respect for one another can more easily revitalize their relationship.
Connectedness: When individuals honor each other, they are generally able to appreciate each other’s perspective.
Shared sense of power: When couples disagree, they look for common ground rather than insisting their way has to be supreme.
Shared goals: Partners incorporate each other’s goals into their concept of what their intimate relationship is about.
Open communication: Each person in the relationship can talk fully and honestly about his or her convictions and core beliefs.