Social representations of fidelity among couples with different marital experience

Abstract

This article examines the social representations of fidelity among couples with different marital experience. There are different research dedicated to social representations of couples with different marital experience about trust, infidelity, love, mutual understanding; however, the analysis of psychological-pedagogical literature demonstrates that there were no research dedicated to fidelity in the relationships between spouses. Therefore, the selected topic is unique. The subject of this article is the social representations of fidelity among couples with different marital experience. The hypothesis lies in the fact that there are substantial differences in social representations of fidelity among couples with different marital experience. Young couples believe that fidelity is the indicator of passion, comfort, ease in communication between the spouses, as well as confidence in making the right choice. Mature couples believe that fidelity is the indicator of mutual understanding and trust, as well as lack of passion. The survey involved 21 married couples with 20 to 30 years of marital experience, and 21 couples with less than a year to 3 years of marital experience. It is worth noting that all the respondents were married officially. For verification of the advanced hypothesis, the article employs the following methods: marriage satisfaction questionnaire (V. V. Stolin, T. L. Romanova, G. P. Butenko), “Communication within Family” (Y. E. Aleshina, L. Y. Gozman, E. M. Dubovskaya), Semantic Differential, “Attidude assessment in married couple” (Y. E. Aleshina).