Midlife often brings significant transformations, presenting both challenges and opportunities for personal growth and relationships. This book explores how this pivotal stage can test the strength of marriages, highlighting the emotional and psychological shifts that couples face. Through insightful discussions, it offers guidance on navigating these changes, fostering deeper connections, and ultimately determining the future of partnerships during this critical life phase.
Lifespan CommunicationSeries
This series delves into the profound questions of human existence through compelling narratives. Immerse yourself in stories that explore relationships, memory, and the meaning of life. Discover how individuals connect and how these bonds shape our identities over time. It's an emotional and thought-provoking journey that resonates deeply with every reader.






Recommended Reading Order
Family communication in the age of digital and social media
- 518 pages
- 19 hours of reading
Family Communication in the Age of Digital and Social Media is an innovative collection of contemporary data-driven research and theorizing about how digital and social media are affecting and changing nearly every aspect of family interaction over the lifespan. The research and thinking featured in the book reflects the intense growth of interest in families in the digital age. Chapters explore communication among couples, families, parents, adolescents, and emerging adults as their realities are created, impacted, changed, structured, improved, influenced and/or inhibited by cell phones, smartphones, personal desktop and laptop computers, MP3 players, e-tablets, e-readers, email, Facebook, photo sharing, Skype, Twitter, SnapChat, blogs, Instagram, and other emerging technologies. Each chapter significantly advances thinking about how digital media have become deeply embedded in the lives of families and couples, as well as how they are affecting the very ways we as twenty-first-century communicators see ourselves and, by extension, conceive of and behave in our most intimate and longest-lasting relationships.
Erika and Klaus Mann
- 552 pages
- 20 hours of reading
This book provides new insights into the lives of Thomas Mann's two eldest children by focusing on their years in America.
Communication at the End of Life
- 234 pages
- 9 hours of reading
This multi-contextual approach serves to integrate current findings, expand our theoretical understanding of the end of life, prioritize the significance of competent communication for scholars and practitioners, and provide a solid foundation upon which to build pragmatic interventions to assist individuals at the end of life as well as those who care for and grieve for those who are dying.
The Darker Side of Family Communication
- 339 pages
- 12 hours of reading
This volume advances theory and research by presenting original, empirical studies as well as theoretical and methodological overviews on dark family communication processes. Taking an interdisciplinary and international approach, the volume includes contributions from the most respected scholars in their specialty areas. It is the first published work on the dark side of family communication scholarship to include critical theorizing. This makes it an important contribution to family communication research in general and dark side work more specifically. Such chapters examine how gender, race, class, and sexual orientation impact and are impacted by dark family communication. In addition to a micro, interaction-based exploration of how social location and dark family communication processes intersect, some chapters offer more social critiques of dark family communication (and how it is socially constructed) at a macro-level. The volume is intended for scholars, researchers, and graduate students interested in the dark side of family communication and family dynamics. It is also well suited for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in family communication, dark side of family communication, family processes, family dynamics, family conflict, and family stress and coping.
Contexts of the dark side of communication
- 340 pages
- 12 hours of reading
From interpersonal communication, organizational communication, computer-mediated communication, and health communication, the book presents a collection of essays that merges theory with practical application. Chapter contributors write about how they and various populations under investigation mitigate a wealth of dark side behaviors spanning sexualization, cyberstalking, bereavement, and various illnesses.
How communication scholars think and act
- 154 pages
- 6 hours of reading
Every great scholar begins as a student. But what does it take to get there? And what is the journey like? This book explores the lifespan development of some of the best-known communication scholars in the United States. Grounded in 30 in-depth interviews, personal stories, and communication theory, the book reveals the nature of human development, the curvature of disciplinary thinking, and the values that drive communication professionals. With powerful examples from great thinkers and teachers such as Robert Craig, Valerie Manusov, and Gerry Philipsen, the book shows that communicating well is a slow, gradual awakening toward others. How Communication Scholars Think and Act is designed to inspire students and faculty alike to persevere in the face of setbacks, to learn about communication more deeply, and to improve human relationships across contexts. This is an ideal text for courses in communication theory, interpersonal communication, and introductory courses to the field. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to become a communication professional.
The middle years of marriage
- 182 pages
- 7 hours of reading
Midlife can be a time of great change for individuals and a "make or break" period for marriages; The Middle Years of Marriage explores this predicament.