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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Tell Me What You Need: An Examination Of Dialectical Tensions Within Romantic Relationships With Depressed Partners, Leah Christine Goodwin
Tell Me What You Need: An Examination Of Dialectical Tensions Within Romantic Relationships With Depressed Partners, Leah Christine Goodwin
Masters Theses & Specialist Projects
While depression communication in romantic relationships has been heavily studied in psychological-based research, there is a lack of research grounded in communication theory. By using Relational Dialectics Theory (RDT) as a framework, communicative tensions and coping strategies were explored within relationships where one partner suffered from depression. Through eleven semi-structured interviews with both depressed and non-depressed individuals in a relationship, three major dialectical tensions and two major maintenance strategies emerged. Findings suggest that couples with a depressed partner faced unique and challenging tensions including involvement/distance, openness/closedness, and revelation/concealment. A number of positive and negative coping strategies for managing the tensions …