Maintaining a Successful Marriage

Marriage is rite of passage that most people engage in at some point in their life. Individuals who are married are usually healthier mentally and physically ("Marriage & Divorce," 2000). Those entering a marriage usually enter it with high levels of satisfaction, with the intention of maintaining this happiness throughout the rest of their lives. However, with a striking divorce rate of roughly fifty-percent (“Marriage & Divorce,” 2000), this unfortunately is not the case.

Martial studies researchers are dedicated to inventing and testing interventions that will aid distressed couples reach satisfactory levels of functioning, as well as understanding how couples can maintain healthy relationships in order to prevent reaching deep levels of dissatisfaction. One avenue through which this is studied is through affect. Affect, also known as emotion, is an integral part of human functioning, as well as initiating and maintaining relationship functioning. There are two types of affect, positive and negative, and each of these exist on different constructs- thus the absence of negative does not mean the presence of positives and vice versa (Watson & Clark, 1997 In: Schroevers & Brandsma., 2010). Barbara Fredrickson (2004) introduced broaden and build theory positive affect and found that positive emotions offer a wide variety of benefits. For example, the hypothesis proposes that positive emotions expand thought-action repertoires compared to negative emotions which appear to restrict them. Positive emotions can also undo negative emotions, promote psychological resiliency, and promote greater well-being. Also, Fredrickson (2004) proposes positivity to negativity ratio of 3:1that exists in flourishing relationships. Therefore, for eve...

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...nce on positive and negative affect- awareness appears to influence an individual’s positive affect whereas nonjudgement appears to influence an individual’s negative affect (Schroevers et al. 2010). Among couples, mindfulness has shown to improve relationship satisfaction (Carson et al., 2004; Burpee et al., 2005), as well as lower negative emotion (Barnes et al. 2007) which in turn enhances conflict resolution and relationship functioning. These contributions of the existing literature on mindfulness and its’ influence of intimate relationships are outstanding, however the literature has yet to identify the effect each facet of mindfulness on one’s affect, and how this contributes to relationship satisfaction. Our study aims to distinguish how each of the five facets influences one’s positive and negative affect and how this influences relationship satisfaction.