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While successful goal pursuit is associated with well-being for individuals, new work has begun exploring the role of goals in satisfaction with romantic relationships. The present work examines the effects of spousal involvement in goal pursuit on personal and marital outcomes. One hundred twenty married couples completed measures of perceived spousal facilitation (i.e., perceiving one's spouse as being encouraging and helpful) and hindrance (i.e., perceiving one's spouse as hindering) of goals, individual well-being, and marital satisfaction over 3 points in time, starting as newlyweds. Mediation analyses tested various models in which enhanced goal progress mediates the influence of perceived spousal facilitation and hindrance of goals on personal and marital outcomes. Results showed some support for the idea that spousal involvement in goal pursuit can be related to concurrent as well as later personal and marital outcomes. Specifically, perceiving one's spouse as facilitating and hindering one's goals predicted personal and marital outcomes in both cross-sectional and longitudinal models, depending on whether the goals represented personal or relationship-focused aspirations. Furthermore, reports of goal progress mediated both within-individual and cross-partner effects in some longitudinal models. Findings from this study offer implications for further understanding the role of a spouse in goal pursuit and in personal as well as marital outcomes over time.

This study simultaneously examined the relationship of daily positive processes, daily negative processes, and the relative impact of each on marital satisfaction and likelihood of divorce in newlywed couples over time. Within six months of marriage, 120 newly married couples were asked to complete measures of relationship quality as well as daily diaries for 21- consecutive days to assess several positive and negative processes (i.e., positive and negative affect, positive and negative behaviors, and responsiveness of partner to attempts of social support and capitalization). This study used a dyadic path analysis in a structural equation modeling framework to examine the hypothesized relationships between positive and negative intra- and interpersonal processes and subsequent marital outcomes over time. Results supported the idea that positive processes within marriages are indicative of marital satisfaction and divorce proneness, over and above negative processes. Overall, the findings of this study contribute to the marital literature in that they provide further evidence that both positive and negative processes should be considered when looking at predictors that contribute to marital outcomes.

Research has shown that forgiveness promotes individual psychological well-being as well as positive relationship functioning. Moreover, couples themselves report that forgiving is one of the most important reasons that their relationships stand the test of time (Fenell,1993). However, the partner behaviours that facilitate, or even thwart, forgiveness in romantic relationships have been the subject of limited empirical research. In the current study, I investigated the effects of two sets of partner behaviour—offers of amends and expressions of responsiveness (i.e. understanding, validation, care)—on forgiveness for real-life hurtful events in romantic relationships. Sixty-four couples participated in a lab-based, experimental study in which I manipulated whether the partner who disclosed feelings about an unresolved, hurtful event (“victim”) received a videotaped response from his/her partner in which this partner (“offender”) expressed: 1) responsiveness only, 2) amends only, 3) both responsiveness and amends, or 4) neither responsiveness nor amends (control group). Trained coders provided micro-ratings of offenders’ specific responsive (e.g., perspective-taking) and amends (e.g., apology) behaviour as well as macro-ratings of more global displays of these behaviours (e.g., overall understanding, overall remorse). Victims also completed measures of relationship satisfaction, event severity, perceptions of their partners’ amends, perceptions of their partners’ responsiveness, and forgiveness. The findings suggest that event severity moderates the effectiveness of the general act of offering amends and/or responsiveness in promoting forgiveness. When event severity was high, the experimental manipulation of the presence vs. absence of amends and of responsiveness did not affect forgiveness. However, it did affect forgiveness for less severe events. Specifically, expressions of amends, responsiveness and their combination yielded similarly more forgiveness than no response at all. These effects were iv mediated by the victim’s perceptions of the offender’s responsiveness to his/her experience of the hurtful event. Further, results indicated that the victims’ perceptions of the offenders’ responsiveness could be promoted, or thwarted, by the content of the offenders’ amends. Micro-ratings of offenders’ amends behaviour demonstrated that when event severity is low, more elaborate offers of amends, in particular remorse, increase the victims’ perceptions of partner responsiveness, which in turn, facilitate forgiveness. To the contrary, when event severity is high, offering more elaborate offers of amends has no effect at all in facilitating victims’ perceptions of responsiveness, and expressing more remorse in particular, may backfire. Finally, the associations between coders’ ratings of the offenders’ behaviour with the victims’ perceptions suggested that the victims’ perceptions, especially of responsive behaviour, are perhaps largely self-construed.

Eating, weight, and shape concerns (EWS) are prevalent among college women, and women with EWS concerns tend to experience difficulties in the domain of interpersonal functioning. For a young woman, romantic relationships represent one of the most important aspects of her interpersonal world; thus, an exploration of the romantic relationships of women with EWS concerns may potentially impact the risk assessment, prevention, and treatment of these women. This study used a longitudinal design to examine the relations between EWS concerns and romantic relationships in 88 college women and their heterosexual partners. Participants completed questionnaires at two time points spaced approximately two months apart. Results revealed that women’s relationship outcomes did not predict changes in their EWS concerns over the subsequent two months, but relationship negative events for men predicted a worsening of women’s EWS concerns. This finding contradicts the common hypothesis that the influence between women’s EWS concerns and romantic relationship outcomes is bi-directional. Men’s desired change in their partners’ bodies predicted women’s EWS concerns cross-sectionally and longitudinally; however, once controlling for Body Mass Index, most results were no longer significant. Thus, it seems that a woman’s actual body weight may be driving both her partner’s satisfaction with her body and her own EWS concerns. Results for analyses determining whether women’s EWS concerns predicted subsequent changes in relationship outcomes indicated that women’s body image during physical intimacy was the only EWS variable that significantly or marginally predicted a worsening of all relationship outcomes for both men and women. This finding provides further support for previous research suggesting that women’s body image problems may lead to avoidance or uneasiness with physical intimacy, which in turn may impact relationship functioning. Finally, men’s desired change in their partner’s bodies predicted only men’s own relationship outcomes cross-sectionally, and only women’s relationship outcomes longitudinally. Overall, this study highlights the importance of longitudinal research and of assessing both partners when exploring the relations between women’s EWS concerns and romantic relationship outcomes.

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