Interspousal Empathy,Marital Satisfaction,and Marriage Counseling

Interspousal empathy is conceived as a fundamental part of the structure of the marital relationship along with other elements of a couple's communication, role, and value systems. In a study of 25 couples receiving marriage counseling, it was found that improvement in interspousal empathy was associated with improvement in marital satisfaction. This finding has implications for approaches to marriage counseling and is supportive of those approaches that attempt to influence directly the empathic exchanges of the couple as well as other communication elements.