Thesis advisor: Bernard O'Brien / This study investigated the phenomenology of marriage as experienced by couples who professed to enjoy a successful marriage. A qualitative approach was chosen to elucidate the multifaceted levels of experience in the marital relationship. In-depth interviews were conducted with twelve middle class, Caucasian couples from an urban area on the East Coast. Subjects were chosen from volunteers who had been married for at least twenty years and whose youngest child was out of high school. The interview covered the development of the couples' relationships from the initial attraction through the child-rearing years, and into the current post-child-rearing stage. Expectations, roles, and problem-solving were examined. Socioeconomic factors, religion, family, ethnicity, and finances were discussed as they related to the marriage. The influence of participants' parents' marriages was explored. The data collected were analyzed for salient themes, categories and critical issues in marital satisfaction. Twelve major themes emerged from the data. Of the twelve, four were salient: expectations of marriage, similarity of values, mutuality, and selective understanding. The strategy of selective understanding proved to be the core category, the one which related to the majority of other categories. These findings are useful for clinical and preventive applications, for their contribution to theories of marital satisfaction, and for guiding future research. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 1992. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Education.

No description available.

Researchers and therapists have given increasing attention and recognition to the cognitive components of marital distress. Numerous investigators have attempted to identify and operationalize key cognitive variables that are related to marital satisfaction. In doing so, researchers have looked at the differences between distressed and nondistressed couples in relation to certain categories of cognitive variables, hoping to demonstrate that a significant relationship exists between certain types of cognition and marital satisfaction. Although investigators agree that certain categories of cognition are directly related to marital satisfaction, there is no clear consensus on the degree of influence that these cognitive variables have on marital satisfaction and to what extent these variables are interrelated. The present study examined the relationship between marital satisfaction and four categories of cognition: casual attributions, expectancies, standards, and assumptions. Correlation analyses showed little if any multicolinearity between the independent variables. Stepwise regression analyses failed to yield a statistically significant model for predicting marital satisfaction using strictly these four independent variables. Although previous studies have demonstrated a relationship between scores on assessment measures for these four independent variables and marital satisfaction, the current sample did not follow this pattern.

This study investigated whether (I) socio-demographic factors such as age, gender, race, number of years in marriage. number of children, frequency of marriage. and educational level (2) psychological well-being. and (3) communication will significantly predict marital satisfaction among married people in Gauteng Province and (4) whether married people with alcxithymia do have satisfactory marriages?.Data was collected on married participants who were randomly selected in Gauteng Province. The sample comprised both males 313 (63.1 %) and females 183 (36.9%). participants were above the consenting age of 18 years, with age ranging between 20 to 72 years.The results indicate that communication, alexithymia, and psychological well-being do predict marital satisfaction significant!}. A positive correlation was found between dyadic adjustment and psychological well-being, also between communication and alexithymia.Three hypotheses were accepted, except for the one of demographic factors which was partially accepted since not all of them were found to predict marital satisfaction. except age and sex. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc. (Research Psychology) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2013

Over 50% of marriages in the United States end in divorce. Researchers have attempted to identify factors that help marriages endure by studying personality, attachment styles, and gender. However, few researchers have examined how dyadic interactions of personality types and attachment types influence marital satisfaction. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of enneagram personality types on marital satisfaction within 3 groups of attachment types: couples who (a) both demonstrate a secure attachment style, (b) contain one member who demonstrates an insecure attachment style and the other who demonstrates a secure attachment style, and (c) both demonstrate an insecure attachment style. Grounded in attachment theory, interpersonal theory, and the enneagram, complementary personality types should relate to greater global marital satisfaction, independent from attachment style. This cross-sectional study used the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator, the Satisfaction With Married Life Scale, and the Revised Adult Attachment Scale to collect data from 324 married couples. A factorial ANOVA indicated that couples having one or both partners who exhibit a secure attachment style have significantly greater global marital satisfaction scores than if both partners have an insecure attachment style. Furthermore, there were no statistically significant differences in global marital satisfaction scores among couples who exhibit any enneagram personality type. Additionally, the interaction effect of enneagram personality types and attachment types were not statistically significant for global marital satisfaction. Therapists can integrate these results with their current model of treatment when working with couples toward forming an earned secure attachment, thereby, improving the effectiveness of couple therapy which may create systemic social change.

Major depressive disorder is a prevalent and serious mental health disorder that negatively affects individuals and their intimate relationships. Given little is known about the experience of depression for men, and the co-occurrence of male depression and marital discord, the current study aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of spouses\' experience of male depression, and how depression affects their relationships. Using a stress generation perspective, this qualitative study interviewed depressed men and their partners about both partners\' experiences of male depression in their relationships and their experience of the relationship between marital discord and depression. Couples identified behaviors and aspects of their relationships that influenced the relation between depression and relationship quality and partially supported the applicability of stress generation theory among couples with a depressed male partner. In addition to partially supporting stress generation theory, couples highlighted several positive experiences in their relationships as a result of enduring these struggles together. The findings pointed to several clinical implications and areas of future research among this population. / Master of Science

The current study compared two measures of religiosity and compared the relationship between religiosity and marital satisfaction. Religiosity was measured using two methods: monthly church attendance and The Shepherd Scale (Bassett et al., 1981). Participants consisted of at 158 married individuals selected from four Christian churches in Burlington County, New Jersey. Results confirm that a relationship exists between Christian religious beliefs and marital satisfaction: a person who has strong, conservative Christian beliefs also has high marital satisfaction. Results also show a correlation between a single-item subjective measure of marital satisfaction and the Marital Satisfaction Inventory-Revised Edition (Snyder, 1997). Beliefs and practices of the Christian faith did not better predict marital satisfaction than attendance at religious functions. Religious beliefs, religious behaviors, or number of times at church each month did not predict marital satisfaction when the Marital Satisfaction Inventory-Revised Edition (Snyder, 1997) was used to assess marital satisfaction but religious behavior predicted marital satisfaction when a single-item, subjective measure of marital satisfaction was used instead. A final finding revealed that personal prayer and time spent in joint prayer are able to predict marital satisfaction regardless of the method used to assess marital satisfaction. / Counseling Psychology

The relationship between personality type as measured by the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and marital satisfaction as measured by the Marital Satisfaction Inventory (MSI) was examined in this research. Subjects were 100 volunteer couples from a southwestern urban area who were given the MBTI and the MSI. These couples were divided into three groups: 40 were in marital therapy; 30 had satisfactory marriages and had been married seven years or less; 30 also had satisfactory marriages, but had been married more than seven years. The therapy group and the satisfactorily married groups were compared as to the number of MBTI preferences held in common, the strength of these preferences and the length of time married. The extraversion-introversion (E-I) scale and the sensing-judging (S-J) temperament of the MBTI were examined by comparing the spousal combinations in each of the groups. Chi square analysis and a Pearson correlation were used. A one-way analysis of variance was run between six of the scales of the MSI and each of the four MBTI dimensions. A MANOVA was attempted on the relationship between the spousal MBTI combinations and the six MSI scales, but the population was too small for this analysis to be conclusive. There were no significant differences between the groups as far as number of preferences held in common, length of time married, and the sensing-judging temperament. There were significantly more couples in the therapy group who had differences of 40 or more points on the four MBTI scales. The extent of the difference on the sensing-intuitive (S-N) scale was found to discriminate between satisfactory and unsatisfactory marriages. Differences on the E-I scale were found to effect couples' satisfaction in the MSI scales of Time Together and Affective Communication with the combination of introvert with introvert having the most difficulty in these areas.

This thesis examines the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics, levels of personal religiosity, and reported marital satisfaction. Current research suggests links among these dimensions of interpersonal life, and building upon existing literature, I examine the effects of one's religious homogamy and the salience of religious homogamy in relation to one's reported marital satisfaction. Data used are parts of Wave II of the Baylor Religious Survey, a religiously-focused data set that compiles information of social and religious attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors on a national scale. Multiple hypotheses on possible links between variables are tested, and the relationships between marital satisfaction and many religious and sociodemographic variables are upheld; however, the relation between the salience of religious homogamy and marital satisfaction is most prevalent.

The development of emotion regulation skills is an imperative task early in development. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a physiological proxy of regulation, is indicative of one’s regulatory capacity and can be predictive of behavior in later life (Graham, Ablow, & Measelle, 2010; Moore, 2010). Children begin regulating their emotions at a physiological level early in infancy. Infants who are able to properly suppress RSA have higher quality social interactions in childhood (Graziano, Keane, & Calkins, 2007). Previous work has suggested that parents play a role in predicting infant RSA (Conradt & Ablow, 2010). For example, parent marital satisfaction is known to impact infants’ physiological regulation, such that infants whose parents are less satisfied with their marriages have a decreased ability to regulate physiologically (Moore et al., 2009; Porter, Wouden-Miller, Silva, & Porter, 2003). Previous research has found that parent personality impacts parenting strategies (Cummings & Davies, 1994; Prinzie, Stams, Deković, Reijntjes, & Belsky, 2009), however work examining how parent personality interacts with marital satisfaction to predict infant RSA is lacking. Moreover, the majority of previous work assessing the parent predictors of infant RSA focused on mothers (e.g., Moore et al., 2009). There are known differences in the way mothers and fathers interact with their infants, as well as differences in the way fathers and mothers respond to marital dissatisfaction (Forbes, Cohn, Allen, & Lewinsohn, 2004; Karney & Bradbury, 1995). The present study focused on examining how marital satisfaction and parent personality predicts infant RSA with mothers and fathers. The current study involved 38 families (6-month old infants, mothers, and fathers). Parents completed questionnaires measuring marital satisfaction and personality. Mother-infant and fatherinfant dyads participated in a baseline and face-to-face play task (Still Face Paradigm; Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978), where infant physiological regulation was assessed. Results involving mothers did not yield significant findings predicting infant physiological regulation. For fathers, results indicated that parent personality and parent marital satisfaction predicted infant physiological regulation. The current study highlights the importance of examining the roles of both mothers and fathers predicting infant physiological regulation.