Couple Relationships In The Middle And Later Years

What factors influence the nature and quality of today's older couple relationships, and what are the complex links between relationships and health? In this cutting-edge volume, the authors present the latest theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives in the field of middle-age and older couple relationships. The chapters cover a broad range of topics, including the impact of health concerns, loneliness, chronic disease management, couple negotiation of everyday tasks, coping across the lifespan, and the prevalence and visibility of nontraditional older couple relationships such as same-sex relationships and "living apart-together" relationships. Implications for couples therapy and policy are included.

Today's older couples often look and function differently than those of yesteryear. Lifespans have increased, while many health challenges remain. Retirement, spousal role equity, and family caregiving needs look different now, and cultural shifts have shaped the prevalence and visibility of non-traditional older relationships, such as same-sex relationships and ""living apart-together"" relationships. With such an increased variety in relationship forms and social contexts, what does the research say about quality? What factors influence the nature and quality of today's older couple relationships, and what are the complex links between relationships and health? In this cutting-edge book, the authors present the latest theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives in the field of middle-age and older couple relationships. The chapters cover a broad range of topics, including the impact of health concerns, loneliness, chronic disease management, couple negotiation of everyday tasks, and coping across the lifespan. Implications for couples therapy and policy are included. In short, the book makes a significant stride into understanding the strengths and challenges of older couples.

Directed towards researchers and practitioners in family studies and gerontology, this completely revised Second Edition of Family Relationships in Later Life provides an innovative new collection of research-based descriptions on family relations of older people. Each chapter summarizes existing literature on the topic and provides up-to-date original research. Topics addressed include: sibling relationships in later life; widowhood; ethnic differences; elder abuse and mistreatment; family care; and health problems.

Couples and families face daunting challenges as they cope with serious illness and disability. This book gives clinicians a roadmap for helping affected individuals and their loved ones live well with a wide range of child, adult, and later-life conditions. John S. Rolland describes ways to intervene with emerging challenges over the course of long-term or life-threatening disorders. Using vivid case examples, he illustrates how clinicians can help families harness their strengths for positive adaptation and relational growth. Rolland's integrated systemic approach is useful for preventive screening, consultations, brief counseling, more intensive therapy, and multifamily groups, across health care settings and disciplines. This book significantly advances the clinical utility of Rolland?s earlier landmark volume, Families, Illness, and Disability.

Who and how we love may be changing but our desire to be in a relationship endures. This book presents an incisive account of how couples experience, understand and sustain long-term relationships, exploring the emotional, practical and biographical resources that couples draw on, across the life course.

This comprehensive, state-of-the-art textbook and reference volume in family gerontology reviews and critiques the recent theoretical, empirical, and methodological literature; identifies future research directions; and makes recommendations for gerontology professionals. This book is both an updated version of and a complement to the original Handbook of Families and Aging. The many additions include the most recent demographic changes on aging families, new theoretical formulations, innovative research methods, recent legal issues, and death and bereavement, as well as new material on the relationships themselves—sibling, partnered, and intergenerational relationships, for example. Among the brand-new topics in this edition are step-family relationships, aging families and immigration, aging families and 21st-century technology, and peripheral family ties. Unlike the more cursory summaries found in textbooks, the essays within Handbook of Families and Aging, Second Edition provide thoughtful, in-depth coverage of each topic. No other book provides such a comprehensive and timely overview of theory and research on family relationships, the contexts of family life, and major turning points in late-life families. Nevertheless, the contents are written to be engaging and accessible to a broad audience, including advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, researchers, and gerontology practitioners. Serious lay readers will also find this book highly informative about contemporary family issues.

Friendships are undeniably important to an individual’s health, longevity and wellbeing, but they can be equally important for the health and happiness of a couple. Just as a friend can provide a mirror to the self, another couple can provide a reflecting team that supports or impedes a relationship’s growth. Two Plus Two: Couples and Their Couple Friendships offers an important framework for helping couples to have conversations about their friendships with other couples and to enrich their own relationships. When couples agree about how to spend their time alone and with others, they are more likely to have a happy marriage or relationship. Couple friendships have not been researched previously, despite their numerous benefits. Authors Geoffrey Greif and Kathleen Deal take an in-depth approach to this important topic. Based on interviews with more than 400 people--some of whom were interviewed with their partners, some who were interviewed alone, and some who have divorced--they find that couples fall into three general categories of making couple friendships: Seekers, Keepers, and Nesters. Drs. Greif and Deal discuss the different styles of interaction they've observed in couples as well as the findings from their research. Readings from their interviews illustrate what characteristics define Seekers, Keepers, and Nesters. Couples at any stage of their relationship will get a fresh understanding of how to seek, foster and sustain positive, healthy friendships.

To love and be loved is arguably one of the most powerful and fundamental driving forces sustaining self-esteem and self-identity throughout the life course. Need for reciprocal loving does not change as we grow older, despite failures of health, loss of a partner, late divorce, and alterations of personality due to the aging process. However, most studies of human sexuality have ignored the problems and developing patterns of older adults entering into new partnerships. To fill this gap, Intimacy in Later Life brings together a wide range of distinguished international scholars to address this neglected research area.