Sources of conflict in the medical marriage

Abstract

The authors surveyed a sample of 134 physicians and 125 physicians' spouses regarding marital satisfaction, sources of marital conflict, and complaints about their spouses. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the number of hours at work did not relate to the degree of marital satisfaction. The chief sources of conflict in the medical marriage appear to revolve around differences in the partners' needs for intimacy, perceptions of the problems in the marital relationship and in each other, and communication styles. Lack of time due to the demands of practice seems to be a complaint that serves the function of externalizing the conflicts in the marriage onto factors outside the marriage.

Divorce among physicians and other healthcare professionals in the United States: analysis of census survey data

“…An important measure that we could not assess is the subjective evaluation of marital quality, which is distinct from proneness to divorce, which we assessed. 10 25 26 Several survey studies in the United States have evaluated marital quality among physicians and have examined factors associated with self reported marital quality, including hours worked, physician specialty area, practice setting, spousal occupation, and presence of children. 26 27 28 29 For example, in a US survey of 891 spouses of physicians, satisfaction was strongly independently associated with time spent awake with their physician partner and number of nights on call a week but was not associated with other professional characteristics such as total hours worked a week, specialty area, or practice setting.…”