Coping Strategies and Relationship Satisfaction in Couples

Abstract

The present study examined the association between relationship satisfaction and dispositional coping in 70 dating and married couples. Couple members completed Spanier's Dyadic Adjustment Scale and provided information about their own coping as well as their perceptions of their partners' coping. Three important findings emerged from the correlational analyses. First, relationship satisfaction related to both self-reported coping and report-of-other coping (reports made by one member about the other member's coping). Regarding the latter, the strongest associations were between married females' report-of-other and their partners' satisfaction with the relationship. Second, there was limited support for the notion that the more similarly couple members cope the more satisfied they will be with the relationship. Third, the more similarly couple members believed they coped, the more satisfied each member was with the relationship, regardless of whether the coping dimension was adaptive or not.