Abstract: Marital communication is the main focus of contemporary marital research in western countries. This article illuminates the three advances of marital communication research: The new conception which now pays more attention to communication patterns over individual behaviors, the shift from unidimensional classification of behaviors or patterns to categorization based on function of behaviors, and the new direction of antecedent investigation which turn from personality to power. The future research should focus on married couples’ positive interaction, development of more effective research paradigms, exploration of potential moderators and mediators between communication and marital satisfaction, investigation of different aspects of marital power, and reevaluation of personality impact on couple’s communication.

Key words: marital communication, communication patterns, couple affect, demand/withdraw, social structure hypothesis