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Marital Satisfaction and Divorce:

The Role of Intervention

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Perception as a variable. To further refine theory of marital stability and quality, Carrère, Buehlman, Gottman, Coan, and Ruckstuhl (2000) conducted a study examining how newlywed perceptions of their partner influenced marital stability. Again, couples had to have been married within the last 6 months and had to be childless. There were 95 couples that completed all measures in the study and were subject to an oral history interview, where couples recalled their relational history, and longitudinal follow up, where spouses were individually interviewed via telephone regarding the status of their marriage.

The oral history interviews were coded based upon how spouses tell their relationship story and interact during the process. The coding reveals both individual perceptions of the marriage and precursors to either stability or divorce. The longitudinal aspect of the study tracks those paths.

Carrère et al. (2000) found the perceptions newlyweds have regarding their spouse were predictive of stability between 4-6 years with 87% accuracy and between 7-9 years with 81% accuracy. Examination of the couples’ perceived marital bond, the tendency to be biased either negatively or positively in appraising the relationship, revealed significant trends among early and later divorced couples. Earlier divorced couples had the lowest marital bond scores, a more negative bias of the marriage, while later divorcing couples had significantly higher marital bond scores.

While it may seem obvious that those couples who have a more negative perception of their spouse’s behavior and the bond between them will eventually divorce, no significance was found between the high perceived marital bond scores of later divorcing couples when compared to couples still married at the conclusion of the study. One possible explanation is that couples who completed the study were more likely to have cohabitated, which is normally a variable correlated with couples at risk for divorce. This study only focused on perceptions of the marital bond and did not include changes in marital satisfaction and/or distress as a factor in potential outcomes, another explanation for the later divorcing couples.

Variables influencing changes in marital distress. Kurdek (1991) does examine changes in marital distress through the examination of a variety of variables. A total of 310 newlywed couples participated in all aspects the study, characterized by higher education, fewer children and stepchildren, and higher incomes when compared to those couples in the attrition group.

In his research, Kurdek (1991) hypothesized that linear increases in marital distress would be correlated with similar increases in dysfunction in perception, negative affect, costs and alternatives to the marriage as well as decreases in satisfaction regarding support, self-perceived expressivity, and rewards and investments. Spouses independently completed self-report surveys once per year, over a three-year period.

The demographic aspects of this study are most interesting. Factors related to increases in marital distress shared by both husbands and wives were lower education and the absence of pooling finances. Kurdek (1991) relates the lack of pooling finances as attempts to retain individual autonomy and a sign of lacking commitment.

Moreover, wives’ increases in marital distress were also correlated with a lower earned income and having stepchildren. The wife’s lower income may result in higher distress as it limits her ability to contribute to the marriage and stepchildren add to distress because of the ambiguous role of stepmothers (Kurdek, 1991). Higher emotional investment, more rewards, and fewer costs also link to higher marital distress. While greater rewards over costs in a relationship creating higher distress may seem puzzling at first, this is possibly the result of wives feeling they are not putting enough into the relationship. Kurdek (1991) states this may be an indication that women who have idealized marriage find normative marital relationships distressing, as they fall short of ideal expectations.

Findings also reveal increases in marital distress paralleled increases in the wife and husband’s dysfunctional relationship beliefs and costs, and decreases expressivity, rewards, and emotional investment. For wives, increases in distress were also linked to increases in negative affect. This study does not, unfortunately, examine the outcomes associated with increased marital distress. While the correlates of distress are similar with factors predicting divorce (Gottman et al., 1998; Carrère, 2000) it is not a causal study.