Describes common characteristics of 13 cases in which one marital partner initiated therapy because the other partner was undecided about continuing their marriage. Initiating clients wanted their marriages to continue even if they were unrewarding and saw themselves as helpless victims. Clients who could turn their attention from the ambivalent…

Examined how changes in family composition due to death of spouse, and subsequent remarriage, affected economic status. Found that death of spouse translated into substantial economic loss, especially for widows. Economic gains for both widows and widowers who remarried were generally large compared to those of persons who remained widowed for at…

Describes 56 women arrested in Detroit, Michigan for killing their husbands in 1982 and 1983 in the context of their killings. Descriptions include the demographic and social characteristics of offenders, victims, and the circumstances of the offenses. Comparisons are made with general population of homicide offenders. (Author)

Examined national sample of 680 married couples. Found that husbands believed in innate sex roles significantly more than wives did. Each partner's beliefs directly influenced the other's, controlling for age, education, and religion. The more one spouse believed that sex roles were innate, the more the other tended to believe in them also.…

Compared helping interactions of partners in close relationships and of strangers. Participants (N=92) from 46 couples completed semistructured helping tasks with their partner and with an opposite-sex stranger. Partners were less empathic and used fewer acknowledgements and more behavioral advisements, interpretations, and self-disclosures than…

This study investigated the stability of leisure preferences across a two-year time span. Data collected from 126 married couples indicated that preferences for specific leisure activities were significantly and positively correlated across the time period and that reported preferences for specific leisure activities declined over time. (Author/CB)

Examined effect of initiator status on well-being and stress in 80 divorced parents at 6 to 12 (T1) and 18 to 24 (T2) months after the divorce. Found that initiators and noninitiators shared similar emotional responses to divorce but that initiators reported more change, stress, and personal growth at (T1), while noninitiators reported higher…

The concept of career set is employed as the basis for a framework designed to analyze the impact of women's involvement in multiple careers on their adjustment to retirement. The author concludes that the familial careers engaged in by married, working women have a mediative effect on their transition to retirement. (Author/CT)

Suggests an integrated systemic-psychodynamic approach to the treatment of characterological disorders within conjoint marital therapy. Draws from object relations and systemic therapies in developing a treatment approach to marriages which include at least one borderline personality disorder spouse. A case example illustrates the…

Assigned 43 chronic pain patients to couples group treatment, patient-only group treatment, or waiting-list control. The 16-hour cognitive-behavioral program produced reduction in pain, spouse-observed pain behavior, physical and psychosocial dysfunction, marital satisfaction, and use of health care resources. Spouse involvement did not facilitate…

This study was designed to test the relationship between spouse personality congruence based on Holland's typology and marital satisfaction. Satisfaction was tested at three levels including a sample of distressed couples seeking marital counseling. Congruence level was found to be a highly reliable predictor of marital satisfaction. (Author)

Surveyed 60 married couples to explore the relationship between spouses' cognitive styles and interaction patterns. Used three measures of cognitive style and one measure of relational interaction patterns. Results indicated that spouses' reports of parallel, complementary, and symmetrical interaction could each be predicted from spouses'…

Distressed and nondistressed couples held discussions of their major marital problem. Mismatch errors or differences in intent and impact were most likely to occur when the receiver of the message evaluated the message more negatively than it was intended regardless of the group. The results provide some support for both the semantic and…

Examined effects of the self-concept, perception of spouse's evaluation, and spouse's actual evaluation on marital quality using interviews with 294 couples. The findings supported the prediction of a relationship between the three components of the reflected self-concept and marital quality and led to a reassessment of the…

Examines psychometric and normative questions related to the Areas of Change Questionnaire (AC) for 163 couples. Results offered support for the AC as a measure of overall marital adjustment, revealed differences according to sex and distress, and found that length of marriage influenced actual and perceived requests for change. (LLL)