Premarital Relationship Correlates of the Erosion of Satisfaction in Marriage

Abstract

The results of the present study show that premarital conflict is a precursor of marital conflict and that, while it does not relate to the feelings that partners report having about one another premaritally, it does predict the extent to which they are satisfied once they have been married about two and a half years. Twenty-one newlyweds provided detailed time-ordered descriptions of their courtships, dividing them into three stages of involvement - casual dating, serious dating, and commitment to marriage. With the events of the courtship fresh in their minds, they were asked to think about the time period of each stage in turn, and to fill out a questionnaire designed to measure: (1) love, (2) ambivalence, (3) conflict and (4) maintenance behaviours (e.g., attempts at problem-solving). Approximately two years later they completed the same scales, as well as a measure of marital satisfaction and adjustment. Premarital conflict was generally the strongest predictor of patterns of marital involvement, but it predicted the subjective feelings of wives better than of husbands. Conflict and maintenance are strongly associated premaritally, but once couples have been married for a while there is no tendency for couples who have high conflict to make greater efforts at problem-solving. The results are discussed in terms of couples' changing attributions regarding the origins of conflict.

The Longitudinal Course of Marital Quality and Stability: A Review of Theory, Method and Research

“…То, как люди выбирают брачного партнера, различные стили и продолжительность до-брачного ухаживания, решение о сожительстве до брака -все это влияет на его последующее развитие. Некоторые начинают исследовать эти вопросы с помощью ретроспективного плана исследования [Kelly, Huston, Cate, 1985;Surra, Arizzi, Asmussen, 1988]. Но проспективные данные, полученные в результате сопровож-дения выборки, состоящей из пар от этапа свиданий или ухаживания до свадь-бы и после, позволят изучить, как переход к браку влияет на его последующее развитие.…”

Marital conflict and parental responses to infant negative emotions: Relations with toddler emotional regulation

“…The conflict scale consists of five items that assess the amount and intensity of conflict in the marital relationship (e.g., "How often do you and your partner argue with one another"). The conflict scale was used because it has been found to be an important predictor of relationship quality (Kelly, Huston, & Cate, 1985) and has been previously related to children's emotion regulation in toddlerhood (Belsky, Youngblade, Rovine, & Volling, 1991). Previous studies have found Cronbach's alphas for the Braiker-Kelley conflict scale between .61 and .92 across mothers and fathers the third trimester of pregnancy of a child until the third year of life (Belsky et al, 1991).…”

Hostility and erosion of marital quality during early marriage

“…In the first few months of marriage, associations between marital quality and spouses' conflictive interactions are nonsignificant or small in magnitude (Huston et al, 1986;Huston and Vangelisti, 1991). Significant, and negative, associations between marital quality and conflictive interactions begin to emerge approximately 1 to 2 years into marriage (Huston et al, 1986;Kelly et al, 1985) and continue to increase in magnitude over time, at least through the first 5 years of marriage (Markman, 1981). Thus, there is a "sleeper effect" (Kelly et al, 1985;Markman, 1981) whereby associations between spouses' conflict and marital quality emerge only after a couple has been married for some time and then continue to increase in magnitude at least several years into thc relationship.…”

“…Significant, and negative, associations between marital quality and conflictive interactions begin to emerge approximately 1 to 2 years into marriage (Huston et al, 1986;Kelly et al, 1985) and continue to increase in magnitude over time, at least through the first 5 years of marriage (Markman, 1981). Thus, there is a "sleeper effect" (Kelly et al, 1985;Markman, 1981) whereby associations between spouses' conflict and marital quality emerge only after a couple has been married for some time and then continue to increase in magnitude at least several years into thc relationship. It follows that associations between trait hostility and marital quality may be obscured or weakened in studies that employ couples who have been married for varying lengths of time or that do not account for length of marriage either methodologically or statistically.…”