The purpose of this study was to more closely examine the association between avoidance and satisfaction during a potentially conflict-inducing conversation with one's dating partner. The results suggest that the way people respond to their own and their partner's conflict avoidance depends upon whether they are male or female. The perception of one's partner's avoidance and one's own avoidance were only dissatisfying for women. Moreover, although the chilling effect (M. E. Roloff & D. H. Cloven, 1990) was present for both men and women, it only affected women's relationship satisfaction. The results also revealed that the association between conflict avoidance and dissatisfaction was bidirectional for women. For both men and women, the more dissatisfied they were entering into the conversation, the more they avoided during it. Women's avoidance, however, also negatively influenced their relationship satisfaction. Finally, the strength of the associations suggests that satisfaction may have a slightly stronger impact on avoidance than avoidance has on satisfaction.

The purpose of this study was to determine how adolescents in divorced and nondivorced families respond psychologically and physiologically to their parents' negative disclosures when talking about their parents' relationship. The study also investigated how parents respond to their own disclosures about their relationship with the other parent. In general, the results illustrate the important role that adolescents' feelings of being caught can contribute to their well-being. The findings also supported the hypothesis that the valence of parental disclosures was a more important consideration than its frequency in the understanding of adolescents' reactions to their parents' disclosures, especially for adolescents from divorced families. Disclosure valence was also associated with parental anxiety, such that disclosure negativity predicted elevations in parents' anxiety during the discussion. Ultimately, children from divorced families who already felt caught between their parents and whose parents tended to disclose negative information about the other parent to them were more likely than other adolescents to report feeling anxious during that conversation. The results for changes in physiological arousal were not significant and were not consistent with the results for self-reported anxiety.