The Sources of Marital Conflict
By Bp. Joseph Boyd (MDEA) What
is a power struggle in a marriage? Marital conflict and “power struggle” are
one and the same, and there is a plethora of psychological and counseling texts
that deal with this major area of study in the therapeutic context. In this
paper, we will explore the basic outlines of this area of study. “Marital conflict has deleterious effects on
mental, physical, and family health, and three decades of research have yielded
a detailed picture of the behaviors that differentiate distressed from non-distressed
couples… Recently, researchers have tried to paint a more textured picture of
marital conflict by studying spouses’ backgrounds and characteristics,
investigating conflict in the contexts of support giving and affectional
expression, and considering the ecological niche of couples in their broader
environment.” (Marital Conflict: Correlates, Structure, and Context, by
Frank D. Fincham, Psychology, Department, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New
York) By ex…
