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This is a blog about the scientific basis of medicine. A judo therapist reads research papers for study and writes about them.

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The secret to keeping couples together is communication and relationship satisfaction.

Thursday, August 5, 2021

psychology

Within-couple associations between communication and relationship satisfaction over time

Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211016920

Commentary

The science of relationships claims that the quality of a couple's communication predicts relationship satisfaction over time.

Most studies testing these have examined relationships between individuals, but couple dynamics have also been theorized at the intrapersonal level.

In certain couples, worse communication predicts lower relationship satisfaction in the future.

Three longitudinal studies were studies investigating the within-couple associations between satisfaction and communication.

Across the studies, there was a lagging intraindividual association between negative communication deviance and changes in future satisfaction, but the most robust finding was for a simultaneous intraindividual association between negative communication and satisfaction.

When couples experienced less negative communication than usual, they were more satisfied with the relationship than usual, and positive communication was not found to be associated with relationship satisfaction at the individual level.

This finding provided evidence that changes within individuals due to negative communication are largely symbiotic, rather than predictive of relationship satisfaction.

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