The Role of Psychological Distress in Relational Health Instability among Romantic Couples: A Qualitative Inquiry (original) (raw)
Related papers
Stress and Complicacy Among Relationships: A Major Health Concern
2020
On Valentine’s Day, the sight of couples holding hands and hugging each-other might unleash a wave of jealousy in those who are single. However, there might not be much to be jealous about. Also, marital quality clearly colors one’s overall sense of well-being, and marital distress elevates health risks, says a leading clinical psychology journal. However, the simple presence of a spouse is not necessarily protective; a troubled marriage is itself a prime source of stress, and simultaneously limits the partner’s ability to seek support in other relationships. The worst distance between two persons in a relationship misunderstanding. Indeed, the relationship between life satisfaction and marital quality is stronger than life satisfaction’s ties to either one’s job or one’s health.
Marital Coping Inventory (MCI) 1990
Journal of marriage and the family, 1990
In the course of a long-term, intimate relationship such as marriage, recurring strains require people to cope in a way that seems to be different from the way they respond to sudden traumatic events. An inventory was developed to identify the major kinds of coping used in dealing with recurring marital problems. A substantial normative population (n = 368) provided a data base for discovering five robust subscales. Cronbach's alpha reliabilities were satisfactory (Conflict, .88; Introspective Self-blame, .88; Positive Approach, .82; Self-interest, .82; and Avoidance, .77). The correlations between final scale scores and original factor scores were also satisfactory (.94, .95, .94, .86, and.89, respectively). The finalscale of 64 items was studied to determine the scalescore attributes of subjects sorted for age, sex, education, and years married, and for aspects of validity relating to overall marital happiness and problem severity. Major and unpleasant life experiences can lead to severe personal distress. When Holmes and Rahe (1967) developed a way to calibrate significant life events to study health, their new technique stimulated a flood of life stress research, including scale refinement (e.g., Holmes and Masuda, 1974), studies of the minutiae of daily life (Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer, and Lazarus, 1981), and studies of chronic life strains (Pearlin and Schooler, 1978). These further led to studies of buffering variables such as social support (e.g., Thoits, 1982), personality variables such as defensiveness (Haan, 1977), locus of control (Lefcourt, 1976), and coping behavior (Pearlin and Schooler, 1978). While some studies construed coping as a stable personality attribute (Kobasa, 1979), reviews (Menaghan, 1983a; Wortman, 1983) of the evidence (e.g., Folkman and Lazarus, 1980) suggested that the choice of coping technique was likely to be problem-specific. Because marriage is such a central and important life status, one repeatedly calling upon coping efforts, it is an important source of information concerning the structure and effects of coping efforts. Marital status per se has long been associated with better general well-being (particularly in men), although the quality of the marital relationship further modifies this general finding (Gove, Hughes, and Style, 1983). Marital satisfaction has been repeatedly shown to have higher correlations with overall life happiness than other factors do, in large population surveys spanning more than a decade in the United States (Glenn and Weaver, 1981). The important study by Pearlin and Schooler (1978) showed that coping responses were more powerful in relieving marital and childrearing strains than they were in relieving problems in other central roles, where factors including personality characteristics and social support resources played a greater role. Further, particular coping responses (e.g., controlled reflectiveness) were differentially helpful within marriage. Marriage thus appears to be a potential source of valuable information about coping. Despite this, there have been few attempts to construct specific measures to study coping efforts in mar
Couple & family psychology, 2013
The association between marital discord and depression is well established. Marital discord is hypothesized to be a stressful life event that would evoke one's efforts to cope with it. In an effort to further understand the nature of this association, the current study investigated coping as a mediating variable between marital dissatisfaction and depression and between marital instability and depression. Both marital dissatisfaction and instability, reflecting orthogonal dimensions of marital discord, were included in the model examined to elucidate a more complete picture of marital functioning. Structural Equation Modeling analyses revealed that coping mediated the association between marital instability and depression, but not marital dissatisfaction and depression, suggesting that coping traditionally considered adaptive for individuals in the context of controllable stressors may not be adaptive in the context of couple relationship instability. The findings also have impl...
A multidimensional examination of marital conflict and subjective health over 16 years
Personal Relationships, 2019
Guided by stress process perspectives, this study conceptualizes marital conflict as a multidimensional stressor to assess how three aspects of conflict-frequency of disagreements, breadth of disagreements, and cumulative disagreements-impact subjective health. Longitudinal data of married couples spanning 16 years (n = 373 couples) were analyzed using multilevel modeling. For husbands, more frequent disagreements than usual within a given year were associated with poorer subjective health. For wives, the greater cumulative effects of disagreements over 16 years were harmful for subjective health. We discuss how gendered self-representations and relationship power issues help explain the findings. This research demonstrated the importance of examining multiple aspects of marital conflict to reveal that their subjective health consequences function differently for wives and husbands. K E Y W O R D S conflict, dyadic data analysis, gender differences, health, marriage 1 | INTRODUCTION The health-enhancing effects of marriage are well documented. Married individuals tend to fare better on subjective and objective indicators of health compared to nonmarried individuals, including
Family Relations, 2016
Some scholars have suggested that distressed populations may benefit more from couple and relationship education (CRE) than do their nondistressed counterparts. We examined this hypothesis using actor-partner interdependence models to explore the relationship between baseline relational instability and change for individuals and their partners (379 couples; 758 individuals) who participated in a CRE program for 6 to 8 weeks. Findings indicated that a higher level of relational instability on the part of women was associated with greater positive change in depressive symptoms. Furthermore, respondents' and partners' baseline relational instability moderated the change in women's couple quality, such that women reported greater positive change in relationship quality when reporting higher instability and higher relationship quality before CRE participation, and when their partners reported higher instability and lower quality before CRE participation.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2009
Maintaining a relationship requires that intimates successfully navigate the ups and downs of their daily experiences with their partners. Intimates whose daily global satisfaction is heavily dependent on these experiences exhibit worse relationship outcomes than do intimates whose satisfaction is less sensitive to fluctuating daily experiences. The current studies examined how intimates' reactivity to daily experiences within the relationship is affected by their experiences of stress outside the relationship. Using diary data, Study 1 examined the covariance between spouses' daily global and specific relationship evaluations in 146 newlywed couples. Between-subjects analyses revealed that daily global satisfaction covaried with perceptions of specific relationship experiences more strongly in spouses experiencing more stress. Study 2 examined the within-person association between reactivity and stress using 7-day diaries collected at 3 time points over 4 years in a sample of 82 couples. Intimates' reactivity to daily relationship experiences was stronger when they were experiencing greater than normal stress. All findings held when controlling for the influence of various individual difference factors on reactivity. These findings highlight ways that adaptive relationship functioning may be constrained by external stress.
Marital Conflict Correlates, Structure, and Context
2003
Abstract Marital conflict has deleterious effects on mental, physical, and family health, and three decades of research have yielded a detailed picture of the behaviors that differentiate distressed from nondistressed couples. Review of this work shows that the singular emphasis on conflict in generating marital outcomes has yielded an incomplete picture of its role in marriage.
Spousal interactions are key predictors of relationship satisfaction in couples, but it is not yet sufficiently clear as to which aspect of spousal interactions matters most. In this study, three forms of interactions are examined to disentangle their unique associations with relationship satisfaction. Altogether, 1944 married individuals completed questionnaires in a cross– sectional study. Self-report measures of relationship external stress, negative interactions (NIs), positive interactions (PIs), dyadic coping (DC), and relationship satisfaction were assessed. A multigroup path analytical mediation model was used to test whether couple interactions mediate the association between stress and relationship satisfaction. Stress stemming from outside the relationship is highly associated with an increase in NIs and a decrease in DC. Although all interactions covaried significantly with relationship satisfaction, DC outperformed PI and NI. Being supported by the partner in times of need (i.e. after experiencing relationship external stress) seems to be particularly relevant for marital quality.
Factors Associated With Marital Adjustment in Couples: A Narrative Review
Journal Current Psychosomatic Research (CPR ), 2024
Background and Objective: Marital compatibility is very important in strengthening the relationship between couples and strengthening the foundation of the family.This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the factors related to marital compatibility in couples. Materials & Methods: This review study was conducted by searching databases such as SID, PubMed, Magiran, IranDoc, ScienceDirect, Scopus and Google Scholar in 2024. The keywords used were "associated factors," "marital adjustment," "men," "women" and "couples." Subsequently, studies from 2016 to 2024 were selected. After screening titles, abstracts, and full texts of 1124 studies, 18 studies were ultimately included in the review. Studies with undefined sample sizes and methodologies and those lacking full-text availability were initially excluded from the study process. The quality assessment of the studies was conducted using the appraisal tool for cross-sectional studies (AXIS) tool. Results: The literature review categorized the findings into four groups based on responses to the main research question. These categories include communication factors (interactions, communication style, empathy, and commitment), individual factors (age, age at marriage, marital history, gender and number of children), psychological factors (emotional intelligence, personality traits, attachment style, stress, boredom, domestic violence, self-esteem and marital justice) and economic and social factors (financial status, employment status and education). Conclusion: Communication, psychological, economic and social factors contribute to the marital adjustment of couples.
Perceptions of conflict and support in romantic relationships: the role of attachment anxiety
Journal of personality and social psychology, 2005
Guided by attachment theory, a 2-part study was conducted to test how perceptions of relationship-based conflict and support are associated with relationship satisfaction/closeness and future quality. Dating partners completed diaries for 14 days (Part 1) and then were videotaped while discussing a major problem that occurred during the diary study (Part 2). Part 1 reveals that more anxiously attached individuals perceived more conflict with their dating partners and reported a tendency for conflicts to escalate in severity. Perceptions of daily relationship-based conflicts negatively impacted the perceived satisfaction/closeness and relationship futures of highly anxious individuals, whereas perceptions of greater daily support had positive effects. Part 2 reveals that highly anxious individuals appeared more distressed and escalated the severity of conflicts (rated by observers) and reported feeling more distressed. The authors discuss the unique features of attachment anxiety and...