Authors: Patrick Poyner-Del Vento and Rebecca Cobb
Date and Location: November 2008; Orlando, FL
Summary: Forgiveness in close relationships can enhance intimacy and satisfaction, but the behaviors that require forgiveness, such as psychological aggression, have a harmful effect on relationship quality. We hypothesized that when newlywed spouses engage in more psychological aggression while partners engage in less forgiveness, spouses and partners will experience greater declines in marital satisfaction over one year. Participants were 200 couples from the SFU Transition to Marriage Study who completed online questionnaires. Data from three months prior to the wedding date (Time 1) and one year later (Time 2) were used for analyses. Results indicated that psychological aggression from either spouse did not predict changes in marital satisfaction. However, there was an interaction between husbands’ aggression and wives’ forgiveness—husbands’ greater use of aggressive tactics during conflict and their wives’ lack of forgiveness led to greater declines in husbands’ marital satisfaction. The same pattern was not present for wives. These results suggest that when wives are less forgiving and husbands resort to more aggression, declines in husbands’ marital satisfaction are greatest. This might occur because husbands who engage in more harmful aggression may cause more severe hurt feelings, making it harder for wives to forgive. Consequently, husbands may derive less satisfaction from their relationship over time. This study highlights the dyadic nature of conflict and forgiveness, and suggests that a focus on both spouses' behaviors may yield a more complete understanding of changes in marital satisfaction.
Authors: Kim Watt and Rebecca Cobb
Date and Location: November 2007; Philadelphia, PA
Summary: We examined whether forgiveness mediated the association between attachment security and marital satisfaction. Attachment security is reflected by comfort with intimacy and expectations that others will be responsive and available in times of need. Attachment security, forgiveness, and relationship satisfaction are all associated, and we proposed that a mechanism that underlies the relation between attachment security and relationship satisfaction is forgiveness. Participants were 200 engaged couples from the SFU Transition to Marriage Study who completed online questionnaires 3 months prior to their wedding and 1.5 years later. Attachment security was associated with forgiveness of partner’s relationship transgressions and with relationship satisfaction. Concurrently at the beginning of the study, forgiveness did not mediate the link between attachment security and marital satisfaction. However, forgiveness did mediate the link between attachment security and changes in marital satisfaction over the first year and half of marriage. In other words, forgiveness may be a mechanism of the link between greater attachment security and increases in satisfaction over the early years of marriage.
Authors: Patrick Poyner-Del Vento and Rebecca Cobb
Date and Location: November 2007; Philadelphia, PA
Summary: Couples who experience marital distress are at a greater risk for experiencing higher levels of depressive symptoms, and the reverse also seems to be true (couples who experience more depressive symptoms are at risk of experiencing more marital distress). We hypothesized that higher levels of chronic stress from areas outside the marriage (e.g., school, work, in-laws, finances) would predict more depressive symptoms which would then lead to marital distress. We also hypothesized that higher chronic stress would predict more marital distress and then lead to more depressive symptoms. In the SFU Transition to Marriage Study, we asked couples to rate their current level of satisfaction in their marriage, how depressed they might feel currently, and their level of chronic stress over the past six months. Our results indicated that marital distress partially mediated between chronic stress and depressive symptoms. We also found that depressive symptoms partially mediated between chronic stress and marital satisfaction. On the whole, this study suggests that negative external circumstances may be one of many factors that lead some couples to experience more marital distress and depressive symptoms. One limitation is that this study used data from only the first time point, so it was unclear whether chronic stress is actually the cause of marital distress or depressive symptoms.