Are changes in marital satisfaction sustained and steady, or sporadic and dramatic?

Although prominent theories of intimate relationships, and couples themselves, often conceive of relationships as fluctuating widely in their degree of closeness, longitudinal studies generally describe partners' satisfaction as stable and continuous or as steadily declining over time. The increasing use of group-based trajectory models (GBTMs) to identify distinct classes of change has reinforced this characterization, but these models fail to account for individual differences within classes and within-person variability across classes and may thus misrepresent how couples' satisfaction changes. The goal of the current analyses was to determine whether accounting for these additional sources of variance through growth mixture models (GMMs) alters characterizations of satisfaction changes over time. Applied to longitudinal data from 12 independent studies of first-married couples (combined N = 1,249 couples), GMMs that allowed for class-specific individual differences and within-person variability fit the data better than the GBTMs that constrained these to be equal across classes. Most notably, considerable within-person variability was evident within each class, consistent with the idea that spouses do indeed fluctuate in their satisfaction. Spouses who dissolved their marriages were 3.8-5.7 times more likely to be in classes characterized by greater volatility in satisfaction. Because the early years of marriage appear to be characterized by within-person fluctuations in satisfaction, time-varying correlates of these fluctuations are likely to be at least as important as time-invariant correlates in explaining why some marriages thrive where others falter. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Lasting Declines in Couples' Social Network Interactions in the First Years of COVID.

Since the onset of COVID-19, a rise in loneliness has raised concerns about the social impact of lockdowns and distancing mandates. Yet, to date, the effects of the pandemic on social networks have been studied only indirectly. To evaluate how the pandemic affected social networks, the current analyses analyzed five waves of detailed social network interviews conducted before and during the first 18 months of the pandemic in a sample especially vulnerable to contracting the virus: mostly non-White couples (243 husbands and 250 wives) recruited from lower income neighborhoods. Pre-COVID interviews asked spouses to name 24 individuals with whom they interact regularly. Post-COVID interviews indicated a nearly 50% decline in face-to-face interactions and a nearly 40% decline in virtual interactions, with little recovery over the first 18 months of the pandemic. Compared with less affluent couples, those with higher incomes maintained more of their network relationships, especially when virtual interactions were taken into account.

Stability and change in newlyweds' social networks over the first years of marriage.

Marriage sanctifies the relationship between two spouses, but what happens to their relationships with family, friends, and others who comprise their social networks? Scholarly accounts disagree about whether couples' networks strengthen, weaken, or remain stable in the years after marriage. To reconcile competing perspectives, marriage licenses from lower income communities were used to recruit 462 spouses (231 couples) in their first marriages. Each spouse independently provided data on 24 network members with whom they interact regularly (over 11,000 network members). These data were used to calculate 14 dimensions of each spouse's social network, and networks were assessed in this way three times over the first 18 months of marriage. Over time, spouses' networks grew to include more of each other's family members, more married and financially secure individuals and more members with whom they reported good relationships. For husbands, proportions of their own friends and their wives' friends declined. Proportions of own family and members providing support did not change. With rare exceptions, these changes were not moderated by premarital parenthood, cohabitation, or relationship duration. Thus, regardless of a couples' premarital history, getting married itself appears to be associated with specific changes in spouses' social networks. Yet whether those changes broaden or narrow their networks depends on where in the network one looks. Illuminating how relationships between spouses are shaped by relationships outside the marriage therefore requires multifaceted assessments that are capable of distinguishing among discrete elements of couples' social networks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Typologies of duocentric networks among low-income newlywed couples.

The social networks surrounding intimate couples provide them with bonding and bridging social capital and have been theorized to be associated with their well-being and relationship quality. These networks are multidimensional, featuring compositional (e.g., the proportion of family members vs. friends) and structural characteristics (e.g., density, degree of overlap between spouses' networks). Most previous studies of couple networks are based on partners' global ratings of their network characteristics or network data collected from one member of the dyad. This study presents the analysis of "duocentric networks" or the combined personal networks of both members of a couple, collected from 207 mixed-sex newlywed couples living in low-income neighborhoods of Harris County, TX. We conducted a pattern-centric analysis of compositional and structural features to identify distinct types of couple networks. We identified five qualitatively distinct network types (wife family-focused, husband family-focused, shared friends, wife friend-focused, and extremely disconnected). Couples' network types were associated with the quality of the relationships between couples and their network contacts (e.g., emotional support) but not with the quality of the couples' relationship with each other. We argue that duocentric networks provide appropriate data for measuring bonding and bridging capital in couple networks.

State minimum wage increases delay marriage and reduce divorce among low-wage households.

Objective: To estimate the effects of state-level changes in the minimum wage on marriage and divorce among low-wage earners. Background: Proponents of raising the minimum wage highlight the potential benefits of increased earnings for low-income families, yet to date research on the effects of raising the minimum wage has focused almost exclusively on economic outcomes. No research has yet documented whether these changes actually affect marriage and divorce. Method: Using the Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey, this project applied a quasi-experimental difference-in-difference method to exploit similarities between states that have, and have not, raised their minimum wage. Results: Across data sources, among men and women earning low wages, a one-dollar increase in the state minimum wage predicts a 3%-6% decline in marriage entry and a 7%-15% decline in divorce one and 2 years later. Conclusion: Both changes are likely to strengthen low-income families, and are substantially larger effects than those obtained by federal policies directly targeting interpersonal dynamics within low-income couples. Implications: Government policies that reduce stress on couples and facilitate their access to resources may improve family outcomes, invisibly and without making additional demands on the time of couples who are already strained.

Three tests of the Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation Model: Independent prediction, mediation, and generalizability.

Objective: Efforts to understand why some marriages thrive while others falter are (a) not well integrated conceptually and (b) rely heavily on data collected from White middle-class samples. The Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation Model (VSA; Karney and Bradbury, 1995) is used here to integrate prior efforts and is tested using data collected from couples living with low incomes. Background: The VSA Model assumes (a) that enduring vulnerabilities, stress, and couple communication account for unique variance in relationship satisfaction, (b) that communication mediates the effects of vulnerabilities and stress on satisfaction, and (c) that the predictors of satisfaction generalize across socioeconomic levels. To date, these assumptions remain untested. Materials and methods: With 388 couples from diverse backgrounds (88% Black or Hispanic), we used latent variable structural equation models to examine enduring vulnerabilities, chronic stress, and observed communication as predictors of 4-wave, 27-month satisfaction trajectories, first as main effects and then interacting with a validated 10-item index of sociodemographic risk. Results: (a) The three variable sets independently predict satisfaction trajectories; (b) couple communication does not mediate the effects of enduring vulnerabilities or stress on satisfaction; and (c) in 19% of tests, effects were stronger among couples with higher sociodemographic risk. Conclusion: Effects of established predictor domains on satisfaction replicate in a diverse sample of newlywed couples, and most findings generalize across levels of sociodemographic risk. The failure of couple communication to mediate effects of enduring personal vulnerabilities and stress raises new questions about how these two domains undermine committed partnerships.

Effects of hurricane harvey on trajectories of hostile conflict among newlywed couples.

Natural disasters have been purported to increase, and decrease, hostile conflict in intimate relationships, but heavy reliance on retrospective designs prohibits strong tests of these contrasting perspectives. The present study aims to resolve this ambiguity using a sample of newlywed couples from Houston, Texas who reported their levels of hostile conflict three times before and three times after experiencing Hurricane Harvey. Latent growth curve piecewise regression models showed that robust declines in conflict prior to the hurricane were slowed after the hurricane hit, such that posthurricane conflict slopes flattened and became nonsignificant. Thus, by disrupting natural declines in conflict that occur in the early years of marriage, Hurricane Harvey appears to have been detrimental for couples. Factors examined in relation to hostile conflict (including personality traits, adverse childhood events, stress, and relationship satisfaction) were similar in their predictive power prior to and following the hurricane, suggesting that the hurricane did not markedly alter which couples were most prone to hostile interactions. Implications for understanding relationships in the context of natural disasters are outlined. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The disconnected couple: intimate relationships in the context of social isolation.

Partners in intimate relationships, because they have each other to rely on, have generally been considered safe from the negative consequences of social isolation. Here, we question this assumption, suggesting instead that social isolation may pose a threat to couples by depriving them of the tangible and emotional support that couples are likely to need, especially when confronted by stress. After briefly reviewing theoretical frameworks relevant to this idea, this article summarizes existing research documenting (1) associations between network ties and relationship outcomes, (2) mediators of these associations, for example, support and approval, and (3) moderators of these associations, for example, relationship qualities and cultural differences. We conclude by describing a research agenda to address methodological limitations in existing research and the policy implications of this line of work.

A Bayesian Latent Variable Selection Model for Nonignorable Missingness.

Missing data are exceedingly common across a variety of disciplines, such as educational, social, and behavioral science areas. Missing not at random (MNAR) mechanism where missingness is related to unobserved data is widespread in real data and has detrimental consequence. However, the existing MNAR-based methods have potential problems such as leaving the data incomplete and failing to accommodate incomplete covariates with interactions, non-linear terms, and random slopes. We propose a Bayesian latent variable imputation approach to impute missing data due to MNAR (and other missingness mechanisms) and estimate the model of substantive interest simultaneously. In addition, even when the incomplete covariates involves interactions, non-linear terms, and random slopes, the proposed method can handle missingness appropriately. Computer simulation results suggested that the proposed Bayesian latent variable selection model (BLVSM) was quite effective when the outcome and/or covariates were MNAR. Except when the sample size was small, estimates from the proposed BLVSM tracked closely with those from the complete data analysis. With a small sample size, when the outcome was less predictable from the covariates, the missingness proportions of the covariates and the outcome were larger, and the missingness selection processes of the covariates and the outcome were more MNAR and MAR, the performance of BLVSM was less satisfactory. When the sample size was large, BLVSM always performed well. In contrast, the method with an MAR assumption provided biased estimates and undercoverage confidence intervals when the missingness was MNAR. The robustness and the implementation of BLVSM in real data were also illustrated. The proposed method is available in the Blimp software application, and the paper includes a data analysis example illustrating its use.

Friendship Network Satisfaction: A multifaceted construct scored as a unidimensional scale.

Although satisfying friendships are crucial for well-being throughout adulthood, measures of friendship satisfaction have been limited by: (1) item content relevant to children only, (2) a focus on single relationships rather than the friendship network, and (3) disagreement about the number of dimensions necessary to capture the construct. To overcome these limitations, we assembled an item pool from a number of existing measures, created additional items drawn from research on friendships, and then examined the structure and psychometric properties of those items in two online surveys of over 2000 respondents each. Factor analyses consistently identified two correlated factors-closeness and socializing-but bi-factor modeling revealed that scores on both subscales load strongly on a general factor, suggesting that the multifaceted content can be scored efficiently as a unidimensional composite. Analyses using item response theory (IRT) supported the creation of a reliable 14-item instrument that demonstrated adequate convergent and predictive validity. Thus, the Friendship Network Satisfaction (FNS) Scale is a psychometrically sound tool to advance research on friendships across the lifespan.

Experiencing a Natural Disaster Temporarily Boosts Relationship Satisfaction in Newlywed Couples.

How do natural disasters affect intimate relationships? Some research suggests that couples are brought closer together after a disaster, whereas other research suggests that relationships become more strained in the aftermath. Yet all of this work is limited by a lack of predisaster data that would allow for examination of how relationships actually change. The current study is the first to use longitudinal data collected before and after a natural disaster to examine its effect on relationship outcomes. Using a sample of 231 married couples in Harris County, Texas, who experienced Hurricane Harvey, we found that spouses experienced significant increases in satisfaction from before to after the hurricane, but the increase was temporary; couples decreased in satisfaction after the initial boost. Thus, couples appear to grow closer in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster but then revert to their prehurricane levels of functioning as the recovery period continues.

When Does Verbal Aggression in Relationships Covary With Physical Violence?

OBJECTIVE: Psychological aggression is common in intimate relationships, yet only a subset of psychologically aggressive couples also engage in physical violence. We examine two factors proposed to identify which psychologically aggressive couples display physical violence, emphasizing (a) couples' negative and ineffective communication during relationship-focused conversations and (b) the demands imposed upon couples by chronic social and economic disadvantage. METHOD: From 862 spouses (431 couples), we collected self-report data on psychological and physical aggression, observational data capturing the quality of their communication, and self-report data assessing established indicators of socioeconomic vulnerability. Tests of moderation were conducted with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). RESULTS: The association between psychological and physical aggression was stronger among couples who displayed lower-quality communication and among couples facing higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. The moderating effect of couple communication remained significant after controlling for socioeconomic disadvantage, and the moderating effect of socioeconomic disadvantage remained significant after controlling for communication. All effects remained after controlling for relationship satisfaction. CONCLUSIONS: Specific communication skills and broad indices of socioeconomic vulnerability make independent contributions to acts of physical aggression among psychologically aggressive couples. Conceptual frameworks are needed to integrate these two levels of analysis, and intervention models are needed that identify at-risk couples and that modify the conditions that heighten their likelihood of physical aggression.

How both partners' individual differences, stress, and behavior predict change in relationship satisfaction: Extending the VSA model.

We pooled data from 10 longitudinal studies of 1,104 married couples to test the Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation (VSA) model of change in relationship satisfaction. Studies contained both spouses' self-reports of neuroticism, attachment anxiety, and attachment avoidance; observational measures of engagement and opposition during problem-solving discussions at baseline; and repeated reports of both spouses' stress and marital satisfaction over several years. Consistent with the VSA model, all three individual and partner qualities predicted changes in marital satisfaction that were mediated by observations of behavior and moderated by both partners' experiences with stress. In contrast to the VSA model, however, rather than accentuating the association between individual differences and behavior, both partners' stress moderated the strength, and even direction, of the association between behavior and changes in marital satisfaction over time. Taken together, these findings indicate that 1) qualities of both couple members shape their behavioral exchanges, 2) these behaviors explain how individuals and their partners' enduring qualities predict relationship satisfaction, and 3) stress experienced by both couple members strongly determines how enduring qualities and behavior predict changes in relationship satisfaction over time. The complex interplay among both partners' enduring qualities, stress, and behavior helps explain why studies may fail to document direct main effects of own and partner enduring qualities and behavior on changes in relationship satisfaction over time.

Couples' Diminished Social and Financial Capital Exacerbate the Association Between Maladaptive Attributions and Relationship Satisfaction.

BACKGROUND: Theoretical and clinical perspectives argue that couples' maladaptive attributions for marital problems lead to marital distress, and that these attributions will detract from couples' relationships regardless of their external circumstances. However, emerging work in cognitive psychology indicates that stress simplifies individuals' information processing, suggesting that the demands faced by couples may strengthen the link between maladaptive attributions and relationship satisfaction. METHODS: With a sample of 462 ethnically diverse newlywed spouses living with low incomes (231 couples, with >30% Black and >50% Latinx), we assessed attributions and relationship satisfaction, along with three hypothesized moderators: couples' financial strain, perceived financial capital within couples' social networks, and the proportion of married couples within couples' social networks. RESULTS: After replicating the robust association between maladaptive attributions and relationship satisfaction, we demonstrate that the association between maladaptive attributions and satisfaction is stronger to the extent that spouses' social networks are characterized by fewer financial resources and lower proportions of married couples. CONCLUSION: Contextual factors may alter the effects that partners' cognitions have on relationship satisfaction, suggesting that influences far removed from the dyad itself can affect basic processes arising between partners.

Cumulative Risk and Intimate Partner Aggression.

Objective: Intimate Partner Aggression (IPA) is recognized as a serious challenge to public health, and numerous models specify individual, interpersonal, and contextual antecedents of relationally aggressive behavior. The present study aims to synthesize prior work by determining whether the accumulation of selected factors at these three levels of analysis, when considered simultaneously, predicts IPA. Method: We collected self-report, observational, and social network data from 462 newlywed spouses (231 couples) from low-income neighborhoods at three separate time points across the first 18 months of marriage. Results: Latent growth curve analyses showed that individual and relational risk were consistently related to IPA initial status (i.e., intercepts), for husbands and wives. Effects of contextual risk on IPA were less consistent. All risk indices were unrelated to 18-month changes in IPA. Furthermore, individual and dyadic deficits increased risk for IPA independent of partners' contextual risk. Conclusions: Even after adjusting for potential distal influences, individual and dyadic variables emerge as clear risk factors of IPA. Although there were no significant associations between contextual variables and IPA intercepts and slopes in LGCM, we did find evidence for correlations between all three facets of risk. In light of this co-occurrence of risk across various domains, we recommend locating interventions that target individual and relational risk (e.g., therapies addressing neurotic tendencies and couple therapy with a communication skills training component) specifically within higher-risk environments.

Intimate Partner Aggression and Marital Satisfaction: A Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis.

Intimate partner aggression is common in dissatisfied relationships, yet it remains unclear whether intimate partner aggression is a correlate of relationship satisfaction, whether it predicts or follows from relationship satisfaction over time, or whether longitudinal associations are in fact bidirectional in nature. The present study evaluates these perspectives by examining self-reports of aggressive behaviors in relation to corresponding self-reports of relationship satisfaction among a sample of 431 low-income, ethnically diverse (76% Hispanic, 12% African American, 12% Caucasian) newlywed couples. Using a cross-lagged panel analysis, we examined associations between aggression and satisfaction across four time points, spaced by 9-month intervals, during the first 2.5 years of marriage. Cross-sectionally, less satisfied couples reported higher levels of intimate partner aggression. Longitudinally, aggression was a more consistent predictor of satisfaction than vice versa, though neither pathway was particularly robust: Intimate partner aggression was a significant predictor of relationship satisfaction at 4 of the 12 tested lags, whereas relationship satisfaction was a significant predictor of intimate partner aggression at only one of 12 lags. Because all effects were relatively weak and inconsistent, more specificity is needed to clarify circumstances under which aggression does and does not predict satisfaction, including whether the predictive power of the aggression-to-satisfaction association varies based on the severity of aggression or other individual (e.g., personality) or external (e.g., stress and environmental context) factors. Together, results indicate that dissatisfied couples are more likely to engage in intimate partner aggression, but being dissatisfied is unlikely to increase the level of aggression a couple engages in over time.

Socioeconomic Status and Intimate Relationships.

The ways that couples form and manage their intimate relationships at higher and lower levels of socioeconomic status (SES) have been diverging steadily over the past several decades. At higher SES levels, couples postpone marriage and childbirth to invest in education and careers, but they eventually marry at high rates and have relatively low risk for divorce. At lower SES levels, couples are more likely to cohabit and give birth prior to marriage and less likely to marry at all. This review examines how SES comes to be associated with the formation, development, and dissolution of intimate relationships. Overall, research has highlighted how a couple's socioeconomic context facilitates some choices and constrains others, resulting in different capacities for relationship maintenance and different adaptive mating strategies for more and less advantaged couples. A generalizable relationship science requires research that acknowledges these differences and one that recruits, describes, and attends to socioeconomic diversity across couples.

When poor communication does and does not matter: The moderating role of stress.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 34(6) of Journal of Family Psychology (see record 2020-62946-001). There are two errors in the last sentence of the fifth paragraph (Model 4: Fluctuations in Cumulative Stress X Fluctuations in Behavior) of the Results section whereby the text "less cumulative stress" and "less stress" should have read "more cumulative stress" and "more stress," respectively. Thus, the correct sentence is as follows: "Specifically, relative increases in observed dyadic negativity were associated with decreases in husbands' relationship satisfaction when husbands also experienced more cumulative stress, whereas decreases in observed negativity in the presence of more stress were associated with increases in husbands' satisfaction (t = -2.00, p = .045, see Figure 1 and Table 2, Model 4)." Note that the findings are correctly stated elsewhere in the article.] Although a number of theoretical perspectives in relationship science argue that variability in couples' relationship satisfaction over time is driven by changes in their communication, tests of this hypothesis have been limited to single assessments of behavior. To address this gap, we examine within-couple, across-time changes in communication, and we argue further that couples' external circumstances might combine with these behavioral changes to generate changes in relationship satisfaction. Using self-reports of satisfaction and in-home observational data collected 4 times at 9-month intervals from 414 newlywed couples, we show that fluctuations in dyadic behavior and spousal stress covary with fluctuations in spousal satisfaction. Tests of the interaction between fluctuations in stress and behavior reveal that husbands who experience upward fluctuations in negativity also experience decreases in relationship satisfaction at the same wave but only if they are concurrently experiencing greater stress than usual. Downward fluctuations in problem-solving effectiveness are associated with lower relationship satisfaction but only among spouses who had chronically high levels of cumulative stress; when chronic stress is low, reduced problem-solving effectiveness is unrelated to satisfaction. Exclusive focus on between-couple variability in couple communication, without regard for the stressors that couples face, will likely restrict the understanding and prevention of relationship distress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Adverse childhood experiences, stress, and intimate partner violence among newlywed couples living with low incomes.

The stress-generation model, commonly applied in studies of psychopathology, purports that vulnerabilities to depression (e.g., rumination, doubt, self-blame, social withdrawal) increase the likelihood that stressful events will later occur, thus activating depressive vulnerabilities and worsening the course of depression. We adapt this model to examine whether adversities experienced early in life serve to channel individuals into stressful circumstances that then evoke situational intimate partner violence (IPV) in adulthood. Cross-sectional self-report data on early adversity, stress, and IPV from 231 ethnically diverse newlywed couples living in low-income communities were analyzed with structural equation modeling. Replicating prior research, reports of early adversity and current life stress covaried reliably with IPV, for husbands and wives. Among husbands, early adversity was linked to IPV via stress, whereas for wives, no such mediation emerged. Results remained robust against alternative models (e.g., controlling for relationship satisfaction, substituting relationship satisfaction for IPV, and examining the interaction between adversity and stress as a predictor of IPV). These findings indicate that the situations that are a defining feature of situational IPV may themselves be a reflection of the adversities that men face early in life; in the absence of these stressors, the association between early adversity and later IPV falls to nonsignificance. Assisting men raised in risky environments to appreciate the effects of stress on their interpersonal exchanges in marriage could reduce rates of IPV. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Research on Marital Satisfaction and Stability in the 2010s: Challenging Conventional Wisdom.

Although getting married is no longer a requirement for social acceptance, most people do marry in their lifetimes, and couples across the socioeconomic spectrum wish their marriages to be satisfying and long-lasting. This review evaluates the past decade of research on the determinants of satisfaction and stability in marriage, concluding that the scholarship of the past ten years has undermined three assumptions that were formerly accepted as conventional wisdom. First, research exploiting methods like latent class growth analyses reveal that, for most couples, marital satisfaction does not decline over time but in fact remains relatively stable for long periods. Second, contrary to predictions of behavioral models of marriage, negative communication between spouses can be difficult to change, does not necessarily lead to more satisfying relationships when it is changed, and does not always predict distress in the first place. Third, dyadic processes that are reliably adaptive for middle-class and more affluent couples may operate differently in lower-income couples, suggesting that influential models of marriage may not generalize to couples living in diverse environments. Thus, the accumulated research of the last ten years indicates that the tasks of understanding and promoting marital satisfaction and stability are more complex than we appreciated at the start of the decade, raising important questions that beg to be answered in the years ahead.