The Neglected Links between Marital Support and Marital Satisfaction

Abstract

There is an assumption, largely unexamined, that spouses’ assessments of marital satisfaction often involve considerations of social support from their partners (Fincham & Bradbury, 1990). If this assumption is true, then spouses’ perceptions of social support available from their partners should be related to their marital satisfaction. Surprisingly, there have been very few studies that test this prediction. Thus, as the title of this chapter suggests, the link between marital support and satisfaction has been neglected. Furthermore, marital status is sometimes used as an index of social support without assessing the extent to which the partners in the relationship perceive the marriage to be supportive (for discussions of the pitfalls of this practice see Coyne & De Longis, 1986; Fincham & Bradbury, 1990; Leatham & Duck, 1990). The literature on marriage has “virtually ignored the role of the support that spouses get from and give to each other in determining marital outcomes” (Julien & Markman, 1991, p. 549). The social support literature has also virtually ignored the link between social support and marital outcomes (McGonagle, Kessler, & Schilling, 1992). Thus, two areas of research (marriage and social support) that have become natural topics for the study of close relationships have hardly begun to tap their potential to inform one another (Acitelli & Antonucci, 1994).