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Approximately 149,000 couples will marry and 70,000 couples will divorce in a given year in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2001).  Of the couples who marry today in Canada, approximately 40% will divorce at some point.  How do couples go from being so happy that they pledge to spend the rest of their lives together, to deciding that they can no longer remain married?  Although early relationship characteristics predict marital quality, there is less understanding of how couples have developed along these different marital paths.  The purpose of the Transition to Marriage Project (TTM Project) is to understand relationship processes as they unfold naturally, beginning with a group of engaged couples and following them through the first two years of their marriage.

Although we asked couples about many different relationship processes, we had a specific focus in the TTM project on prosocial behaviours in marriage such as social support, forgiveness, and empathy.  Traditionally, the focus in marital research has been on negative behaviours in marriage such as conflict and aggression, and how they are related to marital outcomes.  This almost exclusive focus on negative relationship processes yielded much important information about marriages.  However, the links between behaviour early in marriage, such as how couples solve problems or deal with conflict, and later outcomes (e.g., dissatisfaction and divorce) are inconsistent.  In other words, happy couples certainly handle problems well and unhappy couples do not, but how couples handle problems does not necessarily lead to changes in satisfaction.

Since the mid 1990s, there has been a change in the trend to focus exclusively on conflict in marriages.  Researchers have called for a greater focus on other key domains in marriage that have thus far been relatively neglected.  New research that targets these so called “positive” relationship processes is now emerging and this project is a part of that trend.

Immediate Project Goals

• To study marriages from their beginnings as they develop over time to better understand the mechanisms that underlie marital dysfunction
• To focus on positive marital processes such as empathy, forgiveness, validation, capitalization, and social support

Down the Road…

Although the TTM project did not involve therapy, our hope is that what we learn about couples and marriages will be used to develop and to refine couples interventions.  If we can better understand trajectories of marriage, then we can better understand how to effect change in those trajectories.  Ultimately, our goal is to add to the body of literature that will help to sustain more personally satisfying romantic relationships that will benefit individuals and their children.

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