Areas of Conflict for Gay, Lesbian, and Heterosexual Couples: What Couples Argue about Influences Relationship Satisfaction

Abstract

Although conflict is an ubiquitous aspect of any close relationship, researchers have paid more attention to how conflict gets resolved (e.g., Gottman, 1994; Heavey, Layne, & Christensen, 1993; Markman, Renick, Floyd, & Stanley, 1993) than to what couples fight about. To redress this imbalance, the focus of the current paper is on identifying the substantive areas in which couples experience conflict and examining whether the frequency of conflict in various content areas is differentially related to relationship satisfaction. Although the eventual research goal is to study how relationship well-being is affected by interactions between the content of what couples argue about and the manner in which couples manage and resolve conflict, the more modest goal of this study was to attend to the link between the content of couple conflict and relationship satisfaction.The conceptual framework used to examine the link between the content of couple conflict and relationship satisfaction was interdependence theory (Kelley & Thibaut, 1978). In this theory, the nature of the interaction between partners is the essence of a close relationship and is viewed in terms of degree of interdependence, that is, the extent to which each partner influences the other partner's positive and negative outcomes derived from the relationship. Generally, a person is satisfied with the relationship to the extent that perceived rewards from the relationship are high, perceived costs to being in the relationship are low, and the relationship is seen as meeting an internalized standard of what a good relationship should be (Rusbult, 1983).Within interdependence theory, frequent conflict between partners generally has been viewed as a cost to being in the relationship (e.g., Duffy & Rusbult, 1986). Indeed, frequency of interpartner conflict consistently has been found to be negatively related to appraisals of relationship satisfaction (e.g., Kurdek, 1991a, 1991b). However, the key issue of concern here is whether interpartner conflict over some areas is more strongly related to relationship satisfaction than is conflict over other areas. Based on interdependence theory (Braiker & Kelley, 1979), one would expect that interpartner conflict in areas that reflect high levels of interdependence would be especially strongly linked to relationship satisfaction because such conflict would directly affect perceived outcomes from the relationship.Surprisingly, few studies have addressed the relation between frequency of relationship conflict in specific content areas and relationship satisfaction. Storaasli and Markman (1990), as part of a larger study, correlated 40 spouses' ratings of the intensity of conflict in 10 problem areas (money, communication, relatives, sex, religion, recreation, friends, alcohol/drugs, children, and jealousy) with their marital adjustment. Spouses were married for about 1 year and did not have children living with them. A key finding from this study was that the relation between marital adjustment and intensity of conflict varied by problem area. In particular, husbands' marital adjustment was most strongly negatively associated with the intensity of conflict over communication and sex. Wives' marital adjustment was most strongly negatively associated with the intensity of conflict over communication and sex as well as over relatives and jealousy.In a study of 168 couples over the first 2 years of marriage, Vangelisti and Huston (1994) related each spouse's satisfaction with eight domains of marriage (communication, influence on making joint decisions, sex, leisure activities, division of household tasks, time together, time with friends/relatives, and finances) to marital satisfaction. Couples were studied shortly after their marriage and then again after their first and second wedding anniversaries. About half of the couples had children at the last assessment. As in the Storaasli and Markman (1990) study, the relation between satisfaction with domains of the marriage and marital satisfaction varied by domains. …