Mutual enjoyment in older couples' conversations and its links to marital satisfaction

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to explore how much mutual enjoyment was observed when couples communicated across multiple types of discussions and how it predicted older spouses' concurrent and future marital satisfaction. Using a sample of happily married, older couples followed over a year (NT1 = 64 couples, NT2 = 55 couples), the current study used both self-reports and observations of couples interacting in three different conversational tasks (marital reminiscence task, problem-solving task, and a health support task) to capture mutual enjoyment. A series of Actor-Partner Interdependence Models revealed that when couples were observed mutually enjoying the conversation more, both spouses reported being more maritally satisfied concurrently. The associations between enjoyment and later satisfaction, however, appeared dependent on both the partner's gender and the topic of the conversation.