Authors: Judit Bognar, Robin Krzysiek, Patrick Poyner-Del Vento, and Rebecca Cobb
Date and Location: November 2010, San Fransisco, CA
Although research generally suggests that forgiveness benefits relationships and individuals, there may be situations in which forgiveness could be harmful. In the current study, we investigated whether the amount of everyday negative behaviours in a romantic relationship (e.g., teasing, making fun of the partner, being inconsiderate, and showing anger) was an important factor in the link between forgiveness and depression symptoms. We found that when men and women engaged in more forgiveness in the context of high-conflict relationships, they were more likely experience higher levels of depressive symptoms six months later.
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: Kimberly Burrus and Rebecca Cobb
Date and Location: April 2008; Irvine, CA
Summary: Intimate partner aggression is common and can have serious physical and emotional consequences for both members of the couple. Although marital distress and declines in satisfaction are strong correlates of marital aggression, the way spouses perceive their partners’ aggressive behaviour and the degree to which they agree about the level of aggression in their relationship may also be important for couples’ relationship satisfaction. We hypothesized that spouses’ self-reports and partner-reports of aggression (physical and psychological) would be negatively associated with marital satisfaction. We also hypothesized that spouses’ perceptions of their partners’ aggression would predict both spouses’ marital satisfaction concurrently and one year later, independently of the partners’ self-reported aggression. In the Transition to Marriage Study, couples completed questionnaires assessing their own use of aggression in the marriage and perceptions of their partners’ aggression over the past 6 months, and marital quality concurrently and one year later. Overall, spouses’ reports of the aggression in their relationship were moderately consistent for reports of husbands’ and wives’ physical and psychological aggression. We found that self-reported psychological aggression negatively predicted spouses’ own concurrent satisfaction, but not partners’ satisfaction. That is, the more aggressive people report being in their relationships, the less happy they are. We also found that although spouses generally agreed about the levels of aggression in their relationships, spouses’ perceptions of their partners’ aggression matter. The degree to which spouses’ perceived their partner as more aggressive than their partner reported was associated with lower marital satisfaction independently of the aggression partners did report perpetrating. In other words, to the degree that spouses saw their partners as shouting, insulting, or swearing at them, regardless of what partners said they were doing, was related to spouses’ dissatisfaction. Generally, spouses’ perceptions of their partners’ aggression did not predict their partners’ satisfaction concurrently, and did not predict either spouse’s satisfaction one year later, probably because there was little change in marital satisfaction over this one year period. The findings suggest that the way spouses perceive one another’s behaviour plays an important role in their own marital satisfaction.