Documenting Mutuality: Testing a Dyadic and Communicative Model of Marital Commitment

摘要

Seventeen in-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted to discover whether the conceptualizations proposed in our communicative theory of marital commitment (Thompson-Hayes & Webb, 2004) comported with the lived experience of marital dyads. Each spouse validated the conceptualizations of commitment (the extent to which spouses experience mutual desire to remain in their marriage as a function, in part, of their interaction), projected longevity (the extent to which marital partners imagine themselves growing older together), and marital quality (the extent to which marital dyads recognize that their marriage has outstanding valued features evaluated as superior to comparable features in other relationships they have had, could be having, and are likely to have). Strong support was found for the conceptualization of communication maintenance behavior (the extent to which marital dyads successfully employ specific interaction activities to sustain, to repair, and to redefine their relationships).