Accounting for Difference: Commuter Wives and the Master Narrative of Marriage

This manuscript is one of many in a special issue of the Journal of Applied Communication Research on “Communication and Distance,” Volume 38, No. 1. The purpose of this paper was to examine how, if at all, commuter wives reference the master narrative of marriage in discussing their own marriages. The personal narratives of 25 commuter wives who participated in focus groups and 49 commuter wives who participated in individual interviews were recorded and transcribed. Thematic analysis of the transcripts in the interpretive tradition found that participants used “accounts” in the form of excuses and justifications to explain the difference of their own marriages from the dominant US master narrative of marriage.