Marriage Companionship and Marriage Well-being: A Comparison of Metropolitan areas in Three Countries

Abstract

The relationship between eight marriage companionship activities and marriage well-being is studied in Sydney, Australia, in Los Angeles, California, and in London, England. Exchange theory is used to predict that the more frequently married males share companionship, the greater their marriage well-being will be. Joint activities are expected to relate to marriage well-being more strongly than are parallel activities. Joint activities are found to be strongly related to marriage well-being in all metropolitan areas, but parallel activities are not. A significant amount of variance in marriage well-being is explained by companionship. A sample of married women in Perth, Australia is brought into the analysis and it is found that the Perth and Sydney respondents have similar responses, and differ somewhat from the other two sets of respondents. It is shown that companionship affects personal happiness, but not as strongly as it affects marriage well-being.