Premarital Relationships: Toward the Identification of Alternative Pathways to Marriage

Abstract

Research on mate selection has concentrated on testing compatibility models of mate selection. Such research has involved comparisons of the individual attributes of the partners, the idea being that some combinations of attributes are more likely to result in mutually satisfying exchanges than others. The interpersonal and psychological processes that move couples into marriage have been left unexamined. The purpose of the present investigation was to gather information about these processes. Fifty newly married couples participated in highly structured interviews, with the husband and wife in each couple being interviewed separately. Each participant constructed, in collaboration with the interviewer, a graph showing the changes in the chance of marriage from the time the relationship began until the marriage day. After finishing the graph, the participants divided their courtship into three periods: (1) casual dating, (2) serious dating, (3) committed to marriage (engaged). They then filled out a questionnaire assessing feelings of love and ambivalence, as well as reports of conflict and relationship maintenance activities for each of the three premarital periods. The graphic data were structured into a set of reference components (curves) of commitment, which were then correlated with specific features of the graphs (e.g., number of downturns), reports of psychological and interpersonal processes, and individual dispositions. A good fit with the graphic data was provided by three reference components. The correlations found between the reference curves and the interpersonal and psychological processes, as well as the information about the predispositions of the partners toward marriage, indicate some of the causal factors that are tied to them. The implications of these results for research on mate selection are discussed.