Does similarity breed marital and sexual satisfaction?

This study examined the effect of socioeconomic-cultural homogamy on the marital and sexual satisfaction of Hong Kong Chinese couples. Using a representative, territory-wide sample of 1,083 first-time married heterosexual couples, this study found that wives were generally less satisfied than their husbands with their marital and sexual relationships. Husbands were more likely to be satisfied with their marriages when they were two to four years older than their wives than when they were of similar age to their wives (i.e., within one year of each other), but they were less likely to be satisfied with their marriages when only their wives were employed than when both partners were employed. In addition, they were less likely to be satisfied with both their marital and sexual relationships when their wives were five or more years older. Wives with an older husband were more likely to be sexually satisfied than wives of the same age as their husband, but they were less likely to be satisfied with their marriages when they were better educated than their husbands. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Does Similarity Breed Marital and Sexual Satisfaction?

This study examined the effect of socioeconomic–cultural homogamy on the marital and sexual satisfaction of Hong Kong Chinese couples. Using a representative, territory-wide sample of 1,083 first-time married heterosexual couples, this study found that wives were generally less satisfied than their husbands with their marital and sexual relationships. Husbands were more likely to be satisfied with their marriages when they were two to four years older than their wives than when they were of similar age to their wives (i.e., within one year of each other), but they were less likely to be satisfied with their marriages when only their wives were employed than when both partners were employed. In addition, they were less likely to be satisfied with both their marital and sexual relationships when their wives were five or more years older. Wives with an older husband were more likely to be sexually satisfied than wives of the same age as their husband, but they were less likely to be satisfied with their marriages when they were better educated than their husbands. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Five factors in long-term marriages

The marriage relationship among 210 retired married couples was investigated as a function of sex, retirement status, relationship to children, commitment of the couple, and stage of ego development of the couple. The marriage relationship was assessed by measuring the expression of love between husbands and wives, and measuring their marriage problems. These older couples expressed less love to each other and had fewer marriage problems than younger married couples. Those couples who were committed to each other as persons, had fewer marriage problems. Those at more complex levels of ego development expressed more love to each other. Sex, retirement, and interaction with children were not related to the marriage relationship.This research was supported in part by NIMH Grant No. RO1 MH26933.     

Love attitude and marital adjustment in the family life cycle

The present study examines husband and wife perceptions of attitude toward love and marital satisfaction through seven family life cycle stages. A significant relationship was determined between husbands’ and wives’ attitude toward love and marital satisfaction for couples in the early years of marriage with no children, and for couples with children in the preschool years. Marital satisfaction and attitude toward love seem to function more independently of one another in the other family life stages. Overall, husbands vary slightly more than wives on marital satisfaction and attitude toward love, but the pattern for both is similar in that each relationship is curvilinear.     

Listening Behaviors of Married Couples: An Exploration of Nonverbal Presentation to a Relational Outsider

This study examined the nonverbal behaviors of spouses as they listened to their partners present an area of disagreement in their marriage to a relational outsider. Ninety-four married couples, representing a range of marital satisfaction levels, engaged in an interview with a researcher about areas of disagreement in their relationships. A rating system was used to capture the nonverbal listening behaviors of spouses from tapes of the interactions. Husbands and wives demonstrated similar composites of listening behaviors overall, but there were some differences in how the particular behaviors were enacted. Specifically, both husbands and wives enacted nonverbal listening behaviors that demonstrated negative emotion and nonverbal involvement. Results also indicated that displays of negative emotion predicted relational dissatisfaction for husbands. Displays of negative emotion did not predict relational dissatisfaction for wives. Nonverbal involvement did not predict relational satisfaction for husbands or wives in this study. These results suggest that it may be important for husbands and wives, regardless of satisfaction level, to demonstrate nonverbal involvement to both their partners and a relational outsider and that the nonverbal expression of negative emotion may be used by dissatisfied husbands as a way to let the relational outsider as well as their wives know that they disagree or are displeased with what their wives are saying.     

Sexual Satisfaction and Marital Satisfaction During the Early Years of Chinese Marriage: A Three-Wave,Cross-Lagged,Actor–Partner Interdependence Model

Sexuality is an integral component of many intimate relationships, and research has consistently demonstrated a positive association between sexual and marital satisfaction. However, the temporal dynamics of this association remain controversial and understudied with rigorous longitudinal dyadic approaches, and empirical efforts examining this association in non-Western samples remain sparse. Based on three annual waves of data from 268 Chinese couples during the early years of marriage, this study tested a cross-lagged, actor–partner interdependence model examining the association between sexual and marital satisfaction. Results indicated that (a) across three waves, husbands’ earlier sexual satisfaction predicted their later marital satisfaction, rather than the reverse; (b) from Wave 1 to Wave 2, wives’ earlier marital satisfaction predicted their later sexual satisfaction, rather than the reverse, but no association between wives’ sexual and marital satisfaction was found from Wave 2 to Wave 3; and (c) four longitudinal indirect associations linking sexual and marital satisfaction were identified, including three actor associations and one partner association. Such findings shed light on the complexity inherent within the dynamic association between sexual and marital satisfaction over the early years of marriage in the Chinese cultural context.     

Socioeconomic,sociodemographic and attitudinal correlates of the tempo of divorce

The association between sociodemographic, demographic, and attitudinal measures and the timing or tempo of marital dissolution over a 14-year time span is examined. Separation is considered equivalent to divorce. Early and late divorce are differentiated by whether the event occurred before or after the average number of years married prior to divorce. Data were obtained on husbands and wives within childbearing years (up to 39 years) in the 1st years of the 1st marriage. A random stratified sample of 610 couples was drawn from records of marriages in a midwestern county between 1972-77. Reinterviews were conducted on 544 couples in April 1985. socioeconomic variables included educational attainment, occupational prestige, wife's employment status, wife's future work plans, husband's attitude to wife's future work plans, total family income, and level of satisfaction with current financial status. Demographic variables are age at marriage, number of children in 1985, marital duration, and desired family size. Attitudinal items were religiosity and gender role orientations (traditionalism, modernism, egalitarianism). Exposure to divorce was not equitably distributed for the 108 who divorced, but this was not statistically significant. The results indicate that those divorced earlier were wives who worked outside the home, worked at more prestigious jobs, planned to be employed throughout married life, and whose father had a higher level of educational attainment. This finding is not consistent with prior research which has shown that favorable socioeconomic conditions lower the probability of divorce. The timing of divorce was affected by the presence of children. Those married at younger ages divorced earlier and couples with children delayed divorcing longer than couples without children. These findings were consistent with earlier research. Catholic wives delayed divorce longer than non-Catholic wives. Males lower in sexual satisfaction divorced earlier. Divorce was postponed longer for husbands with traditional values and wives who had higher scores on egalitarianism. Wives with scores on modernism had earlier divorces than wives scoring lower on modernism. The tempo of divorce was in multiple classification analysis predicted best by wife's employment status and number of children. Cross-classification was not possible.     

Stress from infertility, marriage factors, and subjective well-being of wives and husbands

Stress associated with the inability to have a child is linked to four aspects of marriage and to five dimensions of life quality. Data come from 157 couples who met a standard medical definition for infertility. Wives and husbands were interviewed independently, and most of the following findings apply to both. A causal model suggests that fertility problem stress has direct effects that increase marital conflict and decrease sexual self-esteem, satisfaction with own sexual performance, and frequency of sexual intercourse. Also, fertility problem stress has both direct and indirect effects (via the marriage factors) that decrease evaluations of life-as-a-whole, self-efficacy, marriage, intimacy, and health. The negative effects on life quality are stronger for wives than for husbands. The model suggests that the life quality of couples with fertility problems could be improved if health care providers and couples themselves took steps to reduce such stresses and/or reduce their impact on the marriage factors.     

A Culture of Mutual Support: The Impact of Giving and Receiving of Practical and Emotional Support on African American Marital Satisfaction

Although the literature has discussed the extensive family network ties of African Americans and its implications for marital satisfaction, few studies incorporate primarily African American samples in studies of marital satisfaction and social networks. This study draws on a sample of African American married couples from the National Survey of American Life and explores the impact of mutual support, giving and receiving of practical and emotional support, on the marital satisfaction of husbands and wives. Results from the ordinal logistic regression analyses reveal that emotional support received from family and support given to friends are significantly related to husbands’ marital satisfaction whereas emotional support received from family and negative interaction with family contributes to wives’ marital satisfaction. Research and practice implications with African American married couples are discussed.     

Marital Quality and Spouses' Marriage Work With Close Friends and Each Other

Through in‐home interviews with 142 married couples, we explored how husbands' and wives' marriage work with close friends and one another was linked to their perceptions of marital quality. Results showed that husbands engaged in more marriage work with their wives than with close friends, whereas wives engaged in similar levels of marriage work with their close friends and husbands. For wives, marriage work with their spouses was found to moderate the relationship between marital quality and marriage work with friends. At low levels of marriage work with their spouses, wives' marriage work with friends was negatively related to their reports of marital love and positively related to reports of ineffective arguing. In contrast, at high levels of marriage work with their husbands, no significant relationship was found between wives' marriage work with friends and marital quality for wives. Findings underscore the role of spouses' friendships and suggest that the strength of spouses' ties to one another is linked to the social context they and their close friends create.     

Commitment and Relationship Maintenance Behaviors as Marital Protective Factors during Economic Pressure

Using a contemporary national sample of married couples (N?=?1368 couples) and a dyadic path analysis, the authors examined whether commitment and relationship maintenance behaviors facilitate marital quality resilience for wives and husbands reporting recession-related financial stressors and economic pressure. Relationship maintenance behaviors moderated the association between economic pressure and marital quality for wives. Wives reported higher levels of marital satisfaction and lower levels of divorce proneness during economic pressure when husbands reported higher levels of relationship maintenance behaviors. Unexpectedly, wives reported higher levels of divorce proneness during economic pressure when husbands reported higher levels of marital commitment.     

All Shook Up: Sexuality of Mid- to Later Life Married Couples

The authors integrate theoretical work on the performance of gender with a life course perspective to frame an analysis of in-depth interviews with 17 long-term married couples. The findings indicated that couples' sexual experiences are characterized by change over time, yet that change is shaped by the intersection of gender and age. Midlife couples (ages 50 - 69) were distressed by changes in their sex lives likely because they impede couples from performing gendered sexuality. The source of this distress stems from age-related physical changes; however, it manifests in different ways for husbands and wives. In contrast, later life couples (ages 70 - 86) were more likely to emphasize the importance of emotional intimacy over sex as they age. Marital sex is a source of conflict for many midlife couples because of husbands' and wives' incongruent experiences, but later life husbands and wives tend to have more congruent experiences of marital sex.     

The Performance of Desire: Gender and Sexual Negotiation in Long-Term Marriages

We integrate theoretical traditions on the social construction of gender, heterosexuality, and marriage with research and theory on emotion work to guide a qualitative investigation of how married people understand and experience sex in marriage. Results, based on 62 in-depth interviews, indicate that married men and women tend to believe that sex is integral to a good marriage and that men are more sexual than women. Moreover, husbands and wives commonly experience conflict around sex and undertake emotion work to manage their own and their spouse's feelings about sex. We refer to this emotion work as "performing desire" and show how it is linked to gendered experiences in marriage and to competing cultural discourses around gender, heterosexuality, and marriage.     

Relationship satisfaction,attachment, and nonverbal accuracy in early marriage

This study explored the relations between nonverbal accuracy, relationship satisfaction, and adult attachment in early marriage. Thirty-three couples were assessed at three points in time across the first two years of marriage. On all three occasions, they engaged in an encoding and decoding task using the standard content paradigm (Kahn, 1970) and completed the Quality Marriage Index (Norton, 1983). At Times 2 and 3 subjects also completed a measure of adult attachment which provided scores on Comfort with closeness and Anxiety over abandonment. Nonverbal accuracy increased over time for all message types and husbands were more accurate than wives at decoding positive messages. Accuracy did not predict later relationship satisfaction, but satisfaction predicted later accuracy, mainly for. husbands. Attachment dimensions also predicted later accuracy, with Anxiety over abandonment being more related to accuracy for husbands, and Comfort with closeness being more related to accuracy for wives. There was evidence of increased communication awareness over time for encoders, particularly in terms of the accuracy with which they predicted their spouses' decoding. In addition, husbands and those high in relationship satisfaction were more likely to expect their partners to decode their communications correctly. With regard to communication awareness for decoders, the main finding was that all groups except wives in unhappy marriages were more confident on correct than incorrect messages.     

Intergenerational Support and Marital Satisfaction: Implications of Beliefs About Helping Aging Parents

Everyday support given to aging parents is a salient aspect of married life that may have implications for marital quality. Among 132 middle‐aged couples drawn from Wave 1 of the Family Exchanges Study, the authors examined the moderating effects of each spouse's normative and motivational beliefs about helping parents on associations between the frequency of everyday support that wives and husbands gave to their own parents and marital satisfaction. Husbands' more frequent provision of support was linked to wives' greater marital satisfaction when reports of personal rewards linked to helping parents were high for wives or low for husbands. Conversely, wives' more frequent provision of support was linked to husbands' lower marital satisfaction when reports of filial obligation were low for husbands or high for wives. Findings highlight the interdependence within couples and indicate that both spouses' perceptions are important in understanding linkages between intergenerational support and marital satisfaction.     

Gendered Resources,Division of Housework,and Perceived Fairness—A Case in Urban China

Drawing upon equity and gender theories, we investigate Chinese couples' perceived fairness of the wife's disproportionately heavy household responsibility. Data come from in‐depth interviews with 39 married couples in Beijing during the summer of 1998. Although housework division remained unequal among dual‐earner couples, the majority of wives and husbands saw it as fair. We explore the notion of gendered resources by examining husbands' and wives' opinions about both paid and domestic work. We find that husband's breadwinner role and wife's housekeeper role retain their primary place in the family and that gender‐role expectations produce gendered resources to both wives and husbands. These expectations release both the husbands, who have fulfilled the provider role, from the obligation to share housework equally, and the wives, who combine paid and domestic work, from an equal responsibility of breadwinning. Therefore, the failure to bring adequate gendered resources to a marriage, rather than the unequal distribution of housework, causes a sense of unfairness.     

Stress Crossover in Newlywed Marriage: A Longitudinal and Dyadic Perspective

Studies of stress and marital quality often assess stress as an intrapersonal phenomenon, examining how spouses’ stress may influence their own relationship well‐being. Yet spouses’ stress also may influence partners’ relationship evaluations, a phenomenon referred to as stress crossover. This study examined stress crossover, and conditions that may facilitate crossover, in a sample of 169 newlywed couples over 3.5 years. A significant crossover effect emerged for husbands, which was moderated by couples’ observed conflict resolution skills. For wives, a significant stress interaction emerged, such that the influence of husbands’ stress on wives’ marital satisfaction depended on wives’ own stress levels. These findings highlight the importance of a dyadic approach when examining the role of stress in marriage.     

Male and Female Sexuality During Pregnancy:

We studied male and female sexual behavior and satisfaction during pregnancy. Expectant fathers were less emotionally satisfied than their wives through the pregnancy. Relative to their husbands, women experienced more conflict and guilt, but reported feeling peaceful and fulfilled in pregnancy, more self-accepting sexually, and derived more pleasure from sex. Both women and men underestimated how attractive their partner found the woman's pregnant body, with men finding their wives more attractive. There were no significant differences in level of sexual desire or sexual satisfaction between men and women. A series of multiple regressions identified a number of variables as predictive of male and female sexual satisfaction. Comparing pregnant couples expecting their first child with normative da:a, we found that expectant couples were less satisfied with the frequency of sex and also derived less sexual pleasure than nonpregnant couples.     

Verbal Communication about Sex in Marriage: Patterns of Language Use and Its Connection with Relational Outcomes

This study examined the vocabulary husbands and wives use for talking to each other about sex, and connections between language use and relational qualities. Married people (n?=?293) responded to a questionnaire about their use of common sex-related terms and about several characteristics of their marriage: sexual communication satisfaction, relational satisfaction, and relational closeness. Cluster analysis based on reported use revealed that sexual terms fell into clusters characterized as clinical terms, slang, or standard English. Results showed an association between use of sexual terms, particularly slang terms, and both satisfaction and closeness. This connection was stronger for women than for men. The findings offer insight into sexual talk and marital relationships.     

Verbal Communication about Sex in Marriage: Patterns of Language Use and Its Connection with Relational Outcomes

This study examined the vocabulary husbands and wives use for talking to each other about sex, and connections between language use and relational qualities. Married people (n = 293) responded to a questionnaire about their use of common sex-related terms and about several characteristics of their marriage: sexual communication satisfaction, relational satisfaction, and relational closeness. Cluster analysis based on reported use revealed that sexual terms fell into clusters characterized as clinical terms, slang, or standard English. Results showed an association between use of sexual terms, particularly slang terms, and both satisfaction and closeness. This connection was stronger for women than for men. The findings offer insight into sexual talk and marital relationships.