Affiliation and Independence Issues in Marriage

The present study applied the affiliation-independence model of relationships to marital functioning. Twenty-five distressed couples beginning marital therapy and 25 nondistressed couples completed the LockeWallace Marital Adjustment Scale, the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule, the Marital Conventionalization Scale, and an inventory assessing relationship problems in four specific areas. It was hypothesized that (a) an individual feeling emotionally uninvolved in a marriage is negatively correlated with his or her own affiliation motivation, (b) feeling emotionally neglected by one's partner is negatively correlated with the partner's affiliation motivation, (c) feeling controlled by one's partner is negatively correlated with one's own independence motivation and positively correlated with the partner's independence motivation, and (d) feeling confined in the marriage is positively correlated with one's own independence motivation. These hypotheses were supported in both the distressed and nondistressed samples. The ramifications of these and other unpredicted findings are discussed.