The Social Context of Couple Conflict: Support and Criticism from Informal Third Parties

This study investigates how informal third parties, such as friends and family members, may play a role in couple conflict as perceived supporters or critics of partners' conflicting positions. We examine who partners perceive to be supporters and critics and how beliefs about supporters and critics are related to partners' views of the conflict. In a sample of 98 dating couples, parents and close friends were equally likely to be perceived as critics, but close friends were more likely than parents to be perceived as supporters. In general, partners saw their primary supporters among their same-sex friends in their own, rather than the couple's joint, network. Thinking of one's own position as legitimate was correlated, for women, with the presence of supporters, and for men, with the absence of critics. Finally, the extent to which partners had separate, as opposed to joint, networks of significant others was systematically related to their preferred conflict management strategies.