Self-disclosure: How much is adequate for marital satisfaction? A literature review

Pages: 1469-1474
Samridhi Pareek and Tejinder Kaur (Department of Psychology, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Rajasthan)

When two individuals decide to spend the rest of their lives together, an important question that arises is one of self-disclosure. Every person has lived through experiences that they may not be very comfortable in sharing with their partners. However, they may still want to discuss the same out of various psychological needs like guilt, heaviness or for the pure comfort of sharing oneself with the other. Nonetheless there may also be times when the partner is not adequately responsive to certain details. This may lead to communication gaps or even worse situations. This paper reviews the available literature on how much self-disclosure is adequate in order to achieve marital satisfaction and what aspects should partners refrain from discussing, if any, in order to have a blissful marriage. It also touches upon the nature of responses from the partner, which aid or hamper revelation, thus facilitating the entire process of Self-disclosure. Moreover personal interviews of couples are also discussed which highlight how important a role can disclosure play in marital satisfaction. Finally the paper touches upon other factors which along with self-disclosure can together be worked upon for marital satisfaction.