Abstract
Relationship-defining memories represent enduring themes in a marriage and can provide insight in to marital satisfaction (Alea & Vick, 2010). The purpose of the study presented in this chapter was to examine whether “we-ness,” compared to “I-ness,” expressed in positive and negative relationship-defining memories, were linked to martial satisfaction. Men (n = 99) and women (n = 168) in long-term marital relationships wrote about their most defining positive and negative relationship events. First-person plural (“we-ness”) and singular (“I-ness”) pronouns expressed in the narratives were counted. “We-ness” was less likely to be expressed in negative compared to positive memories. “We-ness” in negative relationship-defining memories was associated with higher martial satisfaction. The effect was particularly for women, who also had a positive association between “we-ness” in positive memories and marital satisfaction. The discussion highlights the role of relationship-defining memories, and “we-ness,” in exploring resiliency in marriage and clinical work with couples.
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Notes
- 1.
It is not clear from the description whether a count of “we” pronouns was used in the coding process, but it seems likely to have been incorporated somehow.
- 2.
Preliminary analyses were conducted to examine whether age and relationship length were differentially related to “I-ness” and “we-ness” in positive and negative relationship-defining memories. No effects were found and thus these variables were not considered further.
- 3.
Sample sizes vary in analyses due to missing data.
- 4.
Age was only related to one study variable, length of relationship, r (267) = .79, p < .001, which was controlled for in analyses.
- 5.
Fishers’ r to z-transformation was conducted to compare the correlations between “we-ness” and martial satisfaction for positive and negative relationship-defining memories for men and women. The correlations for men and women were not significantly different from one another. However, these non-significant findings should be interpreted with caution because Spearman rank-order correlations were used due to non-normal data.
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Acknowledgment
The research was partially funded by a Summer Research Program for Graduate Students from the Graduate School Professional Development Program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Funding was awarded to Stephanie Vick, whom we would like to thank for assistance with data collection.
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Alea, N., Singer, J.A., Labunko, B. (2015). “We-ness” in Relationship-Defining Memories and Marital Satisfaction. In: Skerrett, K., Fergus, K. (eds) Couple Resilience. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9909-6_9
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