Admiration Starvation: A Missing Variable in Marriage Research? (opens in new tab)

There is a peculiar modern superstition that relationships fail because people stop communicating. As if the average couple is one improved reflective-listening exercise away from transcendence. This has always struck me as a little flattering to communication. People can communicate quite beautifully while dismantling one another. And many marriages do not fail because dialogue collapsed. They fail because admiration quietly thinned. That possibility has interested me for years. Not as a gra...