Marital Adjustment and Emotional Empathy in Married Couples

Abstract

Marital adjustment is the state in which there is feeling of happiness and satisfaction between husband and wife with their marriage and with each other. Marital adjustment refers to a process and outcome which is determined by the amount of differences, interpersonal tensions and personal anxiety, satisfaction, cohesion and consensus and affection expression in marital relationship. Emotional empathy refers to one's vicarious experience of another's emotional experiences and feeling what the other person feels. The present study adopts a between groups design to study the difference between married couples living in same city and married couples living in different cities with respect to marital adjustment and its dimensions and emotional empathy. The study also adopts between group design to study gender difference among the married couples living in same city and married couples living in different cities. Furthermore, the study adopts correlational design to determine the relationship between marital adjustment and emotional empathy among married couples living in same city and married couples living in different cities. Non-probability purposive sampling was used to select a sample of married couples living in same city (N=50) and married couples living in different cities (N=50). Results showed that there were significant differences between married couples living in same city and married couples living in different cities with respect to the satisfaction, consensus, cohesion and affection expression dimensions of marital adjustment and emotional empathy. Significant differences were also found between men and women with respect to the satisfaction and consensus dimensions of marital adjustment and emotional empathy. The study recommends that support and understanding from spouses and better affection expression would help married couples achieve greater marital satisfaction.