Communication plays an important role in all types of relationships. It plays a role in what attracts us to someone, how we maintain a relationship and is often cited as one of the key reasons that a relationship may change over time or even fall apart. Communication is not just what we say, but how we say it.

Bradbury and Fincham (1990) carried out a meta-analysis of studies on couples and how they communicated. The researchers found that couples that are in happy relationships engage in relationship enhancing patterns when there is disagreement - that is, they don't blame their partner or assume that the partner did things "on purpose." Negative behaviours are attributed to situational factors. Unhappy couples blame their partners for what happens and don't give them credit for positive events. He called this a distress-maintaining pattern of behaviour.

It seems that how we communicate about problems in our relationships, and how we attribute blame for negative behaviour, could determine whether a relationship will end. It is important, however, to consider if it is the quality of the relationship that leads to negative communication or the attributional style that leads to the breakdown of a relationship.  In 1993, the researchers carried out a twelve-month prospective study to see the role of communication styles on the success of a relationship. They found that when couples engaged in relationship enhancing patterns at the beginning of the study, it was a good predictor of marital satisfaction at the end of the study.  However, the level of satisfaction with the relationship at the beginning of the study did not predict whether the couple would engage in relationship enhancing or distress-maintaining patterns of communication at the end of the study. This could indicate that it is the kinds of attributions that influence the behaviour of couples rather than the other way round.

Of course, there may be many other reasons for a relationship to succeed or fail. Arguing that it all comes down to attributional styles may be a bit reductionist. There is also the problem that in highly dysfunctional relationships - for example, cases of domestic violence - a pattern of seeing the negative behaviours of a partner as only situational and not potentially dispositional can lead to excusing violent behaviours.

Social Penetration Theory (Altman & Taylor, 1973) argues that close relationships are formed by a process of gradual self-disclosure - that is, sharing personal things about yourself to someone that you trust. The researchers argue that self-disclosure leads to self-validation. They argue that disclosure is part of the cost-benefit analysis that takes place in any relationship. As I disclose information about myself, if I feel validated, then I feel that the relationship has value. If I disclose and feel that my potential partner is critical or disinterested, then I see a cost to disclosure and back away from the relationship.

Can self-disclosure be related to attraction? A meta-analysis of self-disclosure studies by Collins & Miller (1994) found that people who disclose intimate information about themselves are more liked than people who don’t. The researchers also found that people tend to disclose more personal information to those that they like.  Finally, if people disclose information to someone, they tend to like the person more. This clearly indicates that disclosure could be an important factor in establishing and maintaining a relationship.

There are several criticisms of this theory. First, it is difficult to determine a cause and effect relationship between disclosure and the health of a relationship. It appears to be more likely that disclosure is a result of a healthy relationship, rather than a cause of one. In addition, a large amount of the research on this topic has been conducted on Western women. This means that there is s significant sampling bias. Men and women appear to have different patterns of disclosure, so the theory may be overly simplistic. Finally, as with all theories about relationships, using only this one argument to explain the health of a relationship is reductionist.

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Ariely argues that online dating is not highly satisfying because the tools we currently have are not all that useful.  People describe themselves using templates - people tend to look for the same thing - we end up with long lists of choices of people who meet what we are looking for, but the choices are all rather superficial (eg height, eye-color, weight, etc). In addition, since there is a general understanding of what people are looking for, people are often less than honest about their actual attributes.

This is linked to several theories about attraction. The key theory on which dating apps are based is the Similarity-Attraction Model. It is assumed that if a person has similar interests, then the person doing the searching will find that person to be more attraction. However, another key theory is social penetration theory - that is, when there is more disclosure, we find the individual more attractive. The only way to do this is by entering into a conversation with the person online. 

As you will see in the next section, poor communication can have a negative effect on a relationship.

Checking for understanding

Why relationships end