This thought-provoking volume offers an innovative and intriguing approach to the study of long-distance relationships. Author Laura Stafford examines romantic long-distance relationships and then expands the conception of long-distance relationships to include other relational types. She summarizes literature across the social sciences on various types of long-distance relationships and extracts themes and patterns across the relational types. In so doing, she reconsiders approaches to and offers an expanded vision of relational maintenance. By expanding her scope beyond romantic relationships, Stafford includes those that span residences and relational types, such as noncustodial parent-child and geographically and residentially separated adult children and parents. She contends that face-to-face interaction is not necessary to maintain healthy relationships, and questions the assumption that maintaining, rather than terminating, a particular relationship is always best for the involved parties. With its interdisciplinary approach to challenging commonly held assumptions about communication and close relationships, Maintaining Long-Distance and Cross-Residential Relationships will be engaging reading for scholars in communication, psychology, sociology, mass communication, and family studies. It is also appropriate for special topics graduate courses on long-distance relationships and human communication, and will serve as a unique supplemental text for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in interpersonal, relational, and family communication and family studies.

Author Laura Stafford summarizes literature across the social sciences on various types of long-distance relationships and extracts themes and patterns across the relational types. In so doing, she reconsiders approaches to and offers an expanded vision

New technologies are radically changing the way that families connect with one another: we can text our teenagers from work, eat dinner with far-away parents via video link, and instantly upload and share photos after a family day out. Whether we are bridging time or distance, and whether we are enhancing our closest relationships or strengthening the bonds of extended family, as computer technologies alter the communication landscape, they in turn are changing the way we conduct and experience family life. This state of the art volume explores the impact of new communication systems on how families interact – how they share their lives and routines, engage in social touch, and negotiate being together or being apart – by considering a range of different family relationships that shape the nature of communication. Composed of three sections, the first looks at what is often the core of a ‘family’, the couple, to understand the impact of technology on couple relationships, communication, and feelings of closeness. The second section studies immediate families that have expanded beyond just the individual or couple to include children. Here, the emphasis is on connection for communication, coordination, and play. The third section moves beyond the immediate family to explore connections between extended, distributed family members. This includes connections between adult children and their parents, grandparents and grandchildren, and adult siblings. Here family members have grown older, moved away from ‘home’, and forged new families. Researchers, designers and developers of new communication technologies will find this volume invaluable. Connecting Families: The Impact of New Communication Technologies on Domestic Life brings together the most up-to-date studies to help in understanding how new communication technologies shape – and are shaped by – family life, and offers inspiration and guidance for design by making clear what families need and value from technological systems.

The Impact of Social Media in Modern Romantic Relationships is the communication field’s most major, comprehensive volume of the study of social media and romantic relationship development. It is the first volume in the discipline of communication studies intended to provide an overview of romantic development that includes all types of social media, such as Tinder and Facebook. The volume contains several major communication and media scholars who have researched social media and romantic relationship development.

Provides an interdisciplinary perspective on behaviors and strategies used to maintain intimate relationships.

Lynne M. Webb (Ph. D., University of Oregon) is Professor in Communication at the University of Arkansas. She previously served as a tenured faculty member at the Universities of Florida and Memphis. Her research examines young adults' interpersonal communication in romantic and family contexts. Her research appears in over 50 essays published in scholarly journals and edited volumes, including computers in Human Behavior, Communication Education, Health Communication, and Journal of Family Communication. --Book Jacket.

What can we learn from looking at married partners who live apart? In Commuter Spouses, Danielle Lindemann explores how couples cope when they live apart to meet the demands of their dual professional careers. Based on the personal stories of almost one-hundred commuter spouses, Lindemann shows how these atypical relationships embody (and sometimes disrupt!) gendered constructions of marriage in the United States. These narratives of couples who physically separate to maintain their professional lives reveal the ways in which traditional dynamics within a marriage are highlighted even as they are turned on their heads. Commuter Spouses follows the journeys of these couples as they adapt to change and shed light on the durability of some cultural ideals, all while working to maintain intimacy in a non-normative relationship. Lindemann suggests that everything we know about marriage, and relationships in general, promotes the idea that couples are focusing more and more on their individual and personal betterment and less on their marriage. Commuter spouses, she argues, might be expected to exemplify in an extreme manner that kind of self-prioritization. Yet, as this book details, commuter spouses actually maintain a strong commitment to their marriage. These partners illustrate the stickiness of traditional marriage ideals while simultaneously subverting expectations.

"Taking a relational approach to the study of interpersonal communication, this best-selling text helps students better understand their relationships with romantic partners, friends, and family members. Updated with the most current research findings and advances in theory, Close Encounters, Sixth Edition offers insightful examples and case studies to show how state-of-the-art research and theory can be applied to specific issues within relationships. While maintaining the spotlight on communication, the authors also emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of the study of personal relationships by including research from such disciplines as social psychology and family studies. The book covers issues relevant to developing, maintaining, repairing, and ending relationships. Both the "bright" and "dark" sides of interpersonal communication within relationships are explored, offering a comprehensive overview of the varied dynamics of close relationships. Engaging features in every chapter help connect content to issues and experiences that resonate with students: "Tech Talk" boxes examine the influence of technology on relationships, "Around the World" boxes explore how different cultures view relationships, and "Put Yourself to the Test" self-assessments encourage students to reflect on their own relationships and communication styles"--

By unpacking 'on-again, off-again' relationships, this book addresses the whys, hows, and outcomes of reconciling with ex-partners.

Our 10th Anniversary series features special essays from influential voices in the field who explore future directions for internationalization and student mobility, as well as the experiences of new generations of international students in less researched contexts and the need for more critical perspectives. Our 10th anniversary cover art celebrates the past ten years with an image of the Holi Festival of Colors celebrated around the world, including Nepal, the birthplace of our Founding & Executive Editor, Dr. Krishna Bista. The image is overlaid with the name of the journal in various languages to celebrate our authors and readers who span the globe, as well as our plans to publish future special issues in the many languages of our readers, similar to our recent Special Issue on International Students in China with full-length articles in Simplified Chinese. This issue features research and authors in Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, Lebanon, Malaysia, the Philippines, Portugal, and South Africa.