Spouses’ Perceptions of Aggression and Associations With Relationship Satisfaction

Authors: Kimberly Burrus and Rebecca Cobb

Conference: Western Psychological Association, 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. The association of spouses’ perceptions of aggression and differences in spouses’ perceptions of aggression with relationship satisfaction have largely been ignored. 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.

Predictors of marital satisfaction in engaged couples: Attachment security and forgiveness

Authors: Kim Watt and Rebecca Cobb

Conference: Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, 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 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.

Marital distress and depressive symptoms: does chronic stress act as an antecedent?

Authors: Patrick Poyner-Del Vento and Rebecca Cobb

Conference: Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, 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). However, not all couples who feel dissatisfied with their relationships will experience depressive symptoms, and not all spouses who are depressed are guaranteed to experience marital distress. Because married couples begin marriage generally very satisfied, this study examined how some couples may begin to experience these negative outcomes. 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 and 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 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 higher levels of initial chronic stress was predictive of marital distress, which was then predictive of more depressive symptoms. We also found that chronic stress was also predictive of more depressive symptoms, which was then predictive of marital distress. On the whole, this study suggests that negative external circumstances may be one of the many factors that lead some couples to experience more marital distress and depressive symptoms (or vice versa). One limitation is that this study used data from only the first time point, so we did not observe change over time.