夫妻问题解决和社会支持、依恋安全性与婚姻质量的关系

以41对新婚夫妻为研究对象,采用观察法与问卷法相结合的方式,对夫妻冲突和支持、依恋安全性和婚姻质量之间的相互机制进行探索。结果显示：（1）妻子的婚姻质量更受到问题解决情境中（而不是社会支持）夫妻的积极行为（而不是消极行为）的影响;丈夫的婚姻质量更受到社会支持情境（而不是问题解决）中夫妻的消极行为（而不是积极行为）的影响;（2）妻子的依恋安全性显著预测妻子的婚姻质量,但丈夫的依恋安全性不能显著预测丈夫的婚姻质量;（3）妻子的依恋安全性在丈夫和妻子的问题解决积极行为对妻子婚姻质量的影响中起完全中介作用,而丈夫的依恋安全性在夫妻问题解决、社会支持行为与丈夫婚姻质量的关系之间不起作用。     

Attachment insecurity,depression, and the transition to parenthood

In a longitudinal study of adult attachment and depression during the transition to parenthood, 76 couples completed questionnaires on three occasions: during the second trimester of pregnancy, and six weeks and six months postbirth. On the first and second occasions, the couples were also interviewed about their experiences of pregnancy and parenthood, respectively. Measures were also completed at similar time intervals by a comparison group of 74 childless couples. Attachment security was assessed in terms of the dimensions of discomfort with closeness and relationship anxiety. Relationship anxiety was less stable for transition wives than for other participants. Relationship anxiety also predicted increases in new mothers’ depressive symptoms, after controlling for a broad range of other risk factors. However, the association between relationship anxiety and maternal depression was moderated by husbands’ caregiving style. Maternal depression was linked to increases in husbands’ and wives’ attachment insecurity and marital dissatisfaction. Results are discussed in terms of the impact of depression and negative working models of attachment on couple interaction.     

夫妻价值观相似性、沟通模式与婚姻质量的关系*

夫妻相似性和婚姻质量的关系一直是婚姻适应研究领域关注的重要课题,然而至今并没有得到一致的结论,而且两者间的作用机制也没有得到充分探讨。为此,从澳门选取132对夫妻,采用夫妻独立作答的方式,对他们的价值观,沟通模式和婚姻适应进行测查,以探讨夫妻价值观的相似性和差异,以及沟通在夫妻价值观相似性和婚姻质量两者关系间的作用。经t检验、阶层内相关和结构方差模型分析,结果发现:(1)夫妻在价值观方面存在相似性,其实夫妻的相似性明显多于随机配对的夫妻;也存在差异,其中丈夫比妻子更看重权力和成就;(2)丈夫报告的双方回避沟通明显多于妻子,但其报告的婚姻满意度和情感表达明显好于妻子;(3)研究不仅验证了以往研究结果,即夫妻越相似,其婚姻质量就越高,而且进一步发现这种关系通过沟通起作用。最后,研究得出结论,伴侣选择应是相似和互补结合的产物,而沟通是夫妻关系的基石。     

夫妻依恋风格、婚姻归因与婚姻质量的关系

本研究采用主—客体互倚模型(actor-partner interdependence model,APIM)的方法深入探讨夫妻的依恋风格、婚姻归因与自身及配偶感知到的婚姻质量之间的关系。以方便取样的方式在北京地区选取155对夫妻,采用Brennan等(1998)编制的亲密关系经历量表(ECR),Stander编制的婚姻归因量表(MAQ)和Spanier编制的婚姻质量问卷(DAS),要求夫妻双方分别报告其依恋风格、婚姻归因方式和感知到的婚姻质量。通过配对t检验、相关分析和结构方程模型分析发现:(1)夫妻对婚姻质量的总体知觉较为一致,但丈夫的婚姻满意度显著高于妻子;(2)夫妻双方在回避依恋和焦虑依恋两个分量表上不存在显著差异,但在婚姻归因上,妻子比丈夫表现出了更多的消极归因;(3)妻子的消极依恋显著地负向预测自身感知到的婚姻质量,而丈夫的消极依恋对自身感知到的婚姻质量没有显著影响;(4)在控制了丈夫、妻子的依恋风格、归因方式对其自身婚姻质量的主体效应之后,丈夫的依恋风格不能显著预测妻子感受到的婚姻质量,但其归因方式可以显著地预测妻子感受到的婚姻质量;然而妻子的归因方式并不能显著预测丈夫的婚姻质量。     

Addressing power in couples therapy: Integrating socio-emotional relationship therapy and emotionally focused therapy

Romantic relationships are more satisfying and fulfilling when power is balanced relatively equally between partners (Leonhardt et al., Journal of Family Psychology, 34, 2020, and 1). Yet, few couples therapy models explicitly outline how to confront relational power issues (Knudson-Martin & Huenergardt, 2015, Socio-emotional relationship therapy: Bridging emotion, societal context, and couple interaction, Springer). Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT; Johnson, 2020, The practice of emotionally focused couple therapy, Routledge) is a well-established, evidence-based therapy modality that many therapists use with couple clients, yet despite its effectiveness, it does not provide direction for explicitly addressing and treating power differentials in couple relationships. In this paper, we explore the integration of EFT with Socio-emotional Relationship Therapy (SERT), a model overlay that acknowledges the impact of social discourse on enactments of power in intimate couple relationships. We first address the importance of understanding power in couple relationships, addressing power in couples therapy, and provide a brief overview of SERT and EFT. We then introduce an integration of the models intended to help therapists balance power, increase connection, and secure attachment bonds between romantic partners.     

Attachment Change in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy and Sexual Satisfaction Outcomes in a Two-year Follow-up Study

Emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT) is an empirically validated attachment based approach to couple therapy. From an EFT perspective, sexual functioning is viewed within the context of an attachment bond, but sexual satisfaction in EFT has not been empirically tested. We examined self-reported sexual satisfaction across 24?months in a sample of 32 couples who received an average of 21 EFT sessions. We found that sexual satisfaction increased across six time points from pre to post therapy and across follow-up (6, 12, 18, and 24?months), and that decreases in attachment avoidance from pre to post therapy predicted increases in sexual satisfaction across time. These findings provide evidence that EFT may help couples improve their sexual satisfaction by reducing attachment avoidance in therapy.     

The nature and predictors of the trajectory of change in marital quality for husbands and wives over the first 10 years of marriage.

Four parameters of the trajectory of change in marital quality (initial status as well as linear, quadratic, and cubic patterns of change) were estimated for husbands and wives over the first 10 years of marriage (n = 522 couples at Year 1 and 93 couples at Year 10). Both husbands and wives started their trajectories of change at fairly high levels of marital quality and showed a cubic pattern of change such that marital quality declined fairly rapidly in the early years of marriage, stabilized, and then declined again. Whereas individual-differences variables predicted the initial status of the trajectory, husbands and wives living with only their biological children showed a steeper decline in marital quality than husbands and wives living without children or stepchildren.     

The Effect of Communication Change on Long‐term Reductions in Child Exposure to Conflict: Impact of the Promoting Strong African American Families (ProSAAF) Program

African American couples (n = 331) with children, 89% of whom were married, were assigned to either (a) a culturally sensitive couple‐ and parenting‐enhancement program (ProSAAF) or (b) an information‐only control condition in which couples received self‐help materials. Husbands averaged 41 years of age and wives averaged 39 years. We found significant effects of program participation in the short term on couple communication, which was targeted by the intervention, as well as over the long term, on self‐reported arguing in front of children. Long‐term parenting outcomes were fully mediated by changes in communication for wives, but not for husbands. For husbands, positive change depended on amount of wife reported change. We conclude that wives' changes in communication from baseline to posttest may be more pivotal for the couples' long‐term experience of decreased arguing in front of children than are husbands' changes, with wives' changes leading to changes in both partners' reports of arguments in front of children.     

Effect of couple illness perception congruence on psychological adjustment in women with rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE: To characterize similarities and differences in illness perceptions between women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and their husbands, and examine whether illness perception congruence predicted wives' subsequent psychological adjustment. DESIGN: Women with RA and their husbands (N=190 couples) recruited from community and clinical settings completed mailed surveys at baseline and 4-month follow-up. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Data for this investigation included illness perceptions in partners and illness severity, marital variables, and psychological adjustment in wives. RESULTS: In general, wives and husbands had similar views of RA. Couple congruence concerning women's personal control over RA and its cyclic nature predicted better psychological adjustment in women 4 months later. Post hoc tests showed better psychological adjustment in wives from couples with similar optimistic beliefs about personal control, illness coherence, and RA consequences, when compared to those in couples with similar pessimistic beliefs. Furthermore, when partners disagreed about RA's consequences, wives fared better when husbands overestimated rather than underestimated their beliefs. In contrast, couple congruence about the emotions and timeline of RA was unrelated to adjustment. CONCLUSION: It may be important for husbands to understand wives' views on their control over RA and its cyclic nature. Furthermore, wives may benefit when they share optimistic views with their husbands about RA, and when their husbands avoid underestimating RA's consequences. Developing interventions to enhance partners' illness understanding may be beneficial.     

Optimizing the alliance in couple therapy

The complexity of the relation between alliance and outcome in couple therapy was investigated in a study of 47 couples in brief therapy. Self-rated alliance was measured after the first and third sessions using the couple version of the Working Alliance Inventory. The results indicated that the correlation between alliance and outcome was significantly stronger when the partners agreed about the strength of the alliance, when the male partner's alliance was stronger than the female's, and when the strength of both partners' alliance increased as therapy progressed. The authors suggest that a unique feature of couple therapy is that the partners have both a preexisting relationship with each other (allegiance) and an alliance with the therapist to balance.     

A randomized clinical trial of a brief, problem-focused couple therapy for depression

The aim of this study was to evaluate a brief couple therapy for depression targeted for mildly discordant or nondiscordant couples struggling with the negative impact of depression. Subjects included women with major depression or dysthymia who had husbands without clinical depression. Thirty-five couples were randomly assigned to the 5-week intervention (n = 18) or a waitlist control group (n = 17), and followed up 1 and 3 months later. Results showed a significant effect of treatment in reducing women's depressive symptoms, with 67% of women improved and 40% to 47% recovered at follow-up, compared to only 17% improved and 8% recovered among women in the control group. Treatment was also effective in secondarily improving women's marital satisfaction, reducing husbands' levels of psychological distress and depression-specific burden, and improving both partners' understanding and acceptance of depression. The treatment was implemented in five 2-hour sessions, representing an efficient, cost-effective approach. Findings support the growing utility of brief, problem-focused couple interventions that simultaneously target depression, relational functioning, and psychological distress experienced by the loved ones of depressed persons.     

Marital Quality of Newlywed African American Couples: Implications of Egalitarian Gender Role Dynamics

This research examined associations between husbands’ and wives’ gender role attitudes, division of household labor, and marital quality in a sample of 697 newlywed African American couples residing in the southern region of the United States. Guided by a cultural ecological framework, we tested hypotheses specific to the unique socio-cultural context of African Americans using a mixed model ANCOVA design. Results revealed that: (1) couples reported lower marital quality when husbands had relatively more traditional gender role attitudes; (2) husbands reported lower marital quality when the couple engaged in a relatively more traditional division of household labor; and (3) husbands with more traditional attitudes who also engaged in a traditional division of labor reported lower marital quality compared to all other husbands. Although African Americans are thought to have more flexible gender role orientations than other racial/ethnic groups within the U.S., these results document within group variability in couple gender dynamics and its association with variability in marital quality.     

Predicting the outcome of behaviour therapy for agoraphobia

Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted on questionnaire data obtained from 33 agoraphobic women and their husbands before and after intensive exposure in vivo for the agoraphobia. The dependent variable in the regression equation was treatment outcome as determined by changes in composite ratings of patients' two main phobias. On this criterion, patients improved by 64% immediately after treatment and by 69% 1 year later. The main predictors of treatment outcome were patients' pre-treatment levels of agoraphobic disability and of extrapunitiveness. The main pre-treatment predictors of change during follow-up were patients' levels of social fear, and of fears which suggested dependency problems. When post-treatment questionnaire responses were used to predict patients' phobia change during follow-up, husbands' scores contributed 50% to the variance. This finding, together with clinical observations, suggested that if husbands were unable to fully acknowledge the emotional impact upon themselves of rapid and substantial improvements in their wives, then they were unlikely to facilitate further phobia improvement in their wives during the first 6 months of follow-up. It was concluded that involvement of the husbands in their wives' therapy would increase the likelihood of continuing phobia improvement after treatment.     

Marital satisfaction in covenant versus standard marriages: Is there a difference?

After the rapid increase of the American divorce rate in the late 20th century, one of the most conspicuous efforts of the marriage movement in the 1990s that was used to increase marital stability was the legislation of the covenant marriage license, a more restricted marriage license issued in three different states of the U.S. To investigate the marital life of newlywed covenant versus standard couples, a large-scale 5-year couple study was conducted between 1998 and 2003 in Louisiana. The present study uses this large-sample, multiple-wave, multiple-group dyadic dataset to examine differences in co-development and divorce rates in 297 covenant and 380 standard mixed-sex couples using a multiple group growth curve modeling and survival analysis. We examined differences in marital trajectories between covenant and standard couples as well as between husbands and wives in each marital group. The results show (1) that the couples in both groups experienced, on average, declines in marital satisfaction, and such a decline was slower in covenant husbands than their wives as well as those in standard marriages, and (2) that co-development in marital satisfaction was more prominent in standard marriages than in covenant marriages, meaning standard couple's marital satisfaction declined at a more similar rate than that of covenant couples. We provide possible explanations and discuss practical implications.     

Couple therapy for military veterans: overall effectiveness and predictors of response

Despite the numerous challenges facing U.S. veterans and their relationships, there have been no examinations of the effectiveness of couple therapy for relationship distress provided to veterans. In the present study, 177 couples presenting for couple therapy at two Veteran Administration Medical Centers completed assessments of relationship satisfaction prior to therapy and weekly during therapy. Results revealed that the average couple showed significant gains in relationship satisfaction during treatment (d=0.44 for men; d=0.47 for women); gains were larger for couples beginning therapy in the distressed range (d=0.61 for men; d=0.58 for women) than for couples in the nondistressed range (d=0.19 for men; d=0.22 for women). Rates of premature termination were high, with 19% of couples completing fewer than three sessions and 62% rated as not completing a "full course" of therapy. Benchmarking analyses demonstrated that the average gains were larger than would be expected from natural remission and similar to previous effectiveness trials; however, average gains were smaller than those observed in couple therapy efficacy trials. Relationship, psychological, and demographic characteristics were generally unrelated to the amount of change in therapy after controlling for initial satisfaction. However, African American couples showed significantly larger gains than Caucasian, non-Hispanic couples. Thus, though yielding smaller effects than those shown in efficacy trials, the impact of couple therapy for veterans' relationship problems appears to generalize across various demographic, psychological, and relationship characteristics.     

Attachment style,communication patterns,and satisfaction across the life cycle of marriage

Questionnaire measures of attachment, communication patterns, and relationship satisfaction were administered to 361 married couples, sampled across the life cycle of marriage. Individuals who were secure in attachment (defined in terms of comfort with closeness and low anxiety over relationships) tended to be paired with secure spouses. Security of attachment was associated with one's own relationship satisfaction, although husbands' satisfaction was related primarily to the anxiety dimension. The most consistent effect of partners' attachment was an inverse relationship between wives' anxiety and husbands' satisfaction. The negative effect of wives' anxiety on perceived relationship satisfaction (for both partners) was evident primarily for couples in which husbands were uncomfortable with closeness. The association between attachment dimensions and relationship satisfaction was largely mediated by communication patterns for wives, but only partially mediated by communication patterns for husbands; for both husbands and wives, a measure of mutually constructive communication emerged as the strongest correlate of satisfaction. These findings were generally consistent across the life cycle of marriage, and they are important in clarifying the nature of the link between attachment and satisfaction in a broad sample.     

Relationship Maintenance Behavior and Adult Attachment: An Analysis of the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model

Associations between relationships maintenance behaviors (positivity, openness, assurances, and sharing tasks) and anxious and avoidant attachment were examined in 265 married couples. Using structural equation modeling to employ the actor-partner interdependence model, the use of positivity, assurances, and sharing tasks were found to be negatively associated with anxious and avoidant attachment for both husbands and wives. Being open and self-disclosing in marriage was not strongly associated with attachment. Results indicated that the use of maintenance behaviors in marriages could have the potential to foster increased security in partners. Research and clinical implications are discussed.     

Perceptions of Parents' Marriage Predicting Marital Satisfaction: The Moderating Role of Attachment Behaviors

This study sought to examine the relationship between perception of parents' marriage, marital satisfaction, and attachment behaviors. Participants included 521 married couples taken from the RELATE project. Gender differences were found between husbands and wives perception of parents' marriage and marital satisfaction. Results also indicated that attachment behaviors were positively and significantly related to increased martial satisfaction for both husbands and wives. Additionally, attachment behaviors moderated the relationship between perception of parents' marriage and marital satisfaction. When perception of parents' marriage was negative but attachment behaviors were high, marital satisfaction increased. These findings underscore the importance attachment behaviors play in married relationships. Clinical implications and future research are discussed.     

Relational aggression in marriage

Drawing from developmental theories of relational aggression, this article reports on a study designed to identify if spouses use relationally aggressive tactics when dealing with conflict in their marriage and the association of these behaviors with marital outcomes. Using a sample of 336 married couples (672 spouses), results revealed that the majority of couples reported that relationally aggressive behaviors, such as social sabotage and love withdrawal, were a part of their marital dynamics, at least to some degree. Gender comparisons of partner reports of their spouse's behavior revealed that wives were significantly more likely to be relationally aggressive than husbands. Structural equation modeling demonstrated that relational aggression is associated with lower levels of marital quality and greater marital instability for both husbands and wives. Implications are drawn for the use of relational aggression theory in the future study of couple conflict and marital aggression Aggr. Behav. 36:315–329, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Sudden gains in treatment-as-usual couple therapy for military veterans

Previous studies of couple therapy have conceptualized change as a gradual process. However, there is growing evidence that, for many clients, the majority of gains in other treatment modalities are often achieved between just 2 sessions. Isolating the frequency, nature, and predictors of these sudden gains (SGs) in couple therapy can add to a growing understanding of how and why couple therapy works. In a sample of 67 couples receiving treatment-as-usual couple therapy in two Veterans Affairs hospitals, 25% of individuals experienced a SG in relationship satisfaction. The magnitude of these SGs were large (d = 1.62) and fully explained the total pre-post change for individuals who experienced them. Individuals with SGs showed significantly greater satisfaction gains during therapy; however SGs were not related to relationship satisfaction or relationship status at 18-month follow-up. SGs were predicted by the content of the previous session, putative change mechanisms of communication, intimacy, and behavior, as well as the partner's SGs during the same period. Results suggest that SGs are an important component of change during couple therapy for some individuals, challenging the assumption of continuous change in previous studies. In addition, predictors of SGs were generally consistent with theoretical and empirical examinations of mechanisms of change in couple therapy.