What kinds of stories do people wish to tell about the development of their close relationships? To address this question, 2 studies of newlyweds compared retrospective reports of marital satisfaction over 4 years with prospective data on marital satisfaction over the same period. In both studies, growth curve analyses revealed that spouses tended to recall satisfaction that had declined in the distant past but made up for those declines with recent improvements. Prospective reports, however, tended to decline linearly over time. Furthermore, Study 2 revealed that current confidence in the future of the relationship was associated with perceptions of change in satisfaction but not perceptions of past levels of satisfaction. Results suggest that the ability to perceive improvements, especially over the recent past, may be a source of hope for partners in less satisfying relationships.

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Under what circumstances are spouses more or less likely to engage in aggressive behaviors? To address this question, the current study drew on multiple longitudinal assessments of 1st-married newlyweds to examine correlates of within-subject variability in aggressive behavior. Controlling for marital satisfaction, the authors found that spouses were more likely to engage in physical aggression at times when they engaged in higher levels of psychological aggression. Additionally, husbands reporting higher levels of chronic stress were more likely to engage in physical aggression overall and were more likely to engage in physical aggression when they were experiencing higher than average levels of acute stress. These results highlight how demands and supports in the context external to a marriage may affect processes within the marriage.

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How do partners in close relationships evaluate the broader implications of their specific problems? Prior research suggests that partners evaluate their relationships through social and temporal comparisons. The current study expanded on this work in two ways. First, within-subject analyses examined whether partners use comparisons strategically, engaging in more favorable comparisons with respect to more threatening problems. Results confirmed that spouses generally perceive themselves to be better off than other couples and generally expect their problems to remain stable over time. However, within-subject analyses revealed that, with respect to more severe problems, spouses were less likely to perceive themselves as superior but more likely to perceive those problems as improving over time. Second, sample and longitudinal data were used to examine the accuracy of partners’ comparisons. Consistent with predictions, social comparisons were associated with actual standing within the sample, whereas temporal comparisons were not associated with actual change over time.

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Like relationship satisfaction, constraints on leaving a relationship have been described as a component of global commitment. But do constraints increase or decrease efforts to maintain the relationship? To address this question, the authors of the current article describe 3 independent studies of spouses and married couples. Across all studies, wives who perceived more constraints on leaving the marriage exhibited lower levels of negative behavior only when their husbands were relatively unconstrained. In Study 3, this association was especially pronounced among less satisfied wives. In Study 2, spouses' perceived constraint also interacted to predict husbands' behavior, but in the opposite direction: Husbands who perceived more constraints behaved less negatively when their wives were similarly constrained but more negatively when their wives were less constrained. These results highlight differences in behavior between couples who persist in marriage because they desire to and those who endure because they have to, raising questions about measures of global commitment that obscure these distinctions. They also highlight the need for a dyadic perspective on the forces that keep relationships together.