Newlyweds’ Unexpected Adjustments to Marriage

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the unexpected adjustments to marriage of contemporary couples. Twenty‐one couples were interviewed. The criteria were as follows: all of the couples were childless, in their first marriage, and the couples had been married less than a year. Qualitative analysis based on a phenomenological approach was used in the investigation. Six themes emerged regarding unexpected adjustments. The themes were as follows: The little things, competing loyalties, letdowns, serious responsibility, relationship roles, and sex. In some cases, gender of the spouse and premarital cohabitation appeared to relevant to distinct types of adjustments. Implications for conceptualizing the transition to marriage and for further research and application toward premarital education are discussed.

Turning inward versus outward: Relationship work in young adults and romantic functioning

“…It may also be that those who prefer turning to a best friend over a partner convey exclusion and distance to partners (Finkenauer, Kerkhof, Righetti, & Branje, 2009), resulting in less intimacy and greater ambivalence. Although individuals may feel more comfortable confiding in long-term friends about romantic concerns than in partners (Hall & Adams, 2011), doing so appears to be linked not only with lower relationship quality, but also lower levels of commitment, a finding consistent with the extant literature (Zhang & Kline, 2009). Therefore, turning more often to a friend may be associated with poorer romantic functioning as it may be a deterrent of couples solving their own problems and establishing intimacy.…”

“…Moreover, looking within sex, both females and males engaged in more frequent RW with partners than with friends. Although this was expected for males (Hall & Adams, ; Helms et al, ), we had predicted that based on the findings of Helms and colleagues (), as well as the fact that these women were dating and not married to life‐long partners, women would more readily turn to friends to discuss romantic concerns. Yet, our findings matched those of Kito (), who reported that both Japanese and American college students had higher rates of disclosure to romantic partners than to friends.…”

“…Moreover, looking within sex, both females and males engaged in more frequent RW with partners than with friends. Although this was expected for males (Hall & Adams, 2011;Figure 5. Simple slopes plot for love, as explained by relationship work with partner, moderated by sex, controlling for length of romantic relationship and length of friendship (N = 106).…”

Emotional suppression in early marriage

“…Newlyweds are likely to idealize each other and typically report the highest levels of marital satisfaction, which tends to decline later in marriage (Hall & Adams, 2011).…”

Family Development Theory 30 Years Later

“…More recently, FDT has been used to research a wide variety of family topics. Some of the more popular topics utilizing FDT over the past 30 years have been in the area of life course stages or events like adoption (Bejenaru & Roth, 2012;Fitzpatrick & Kostina-Ritchey, 2013), parenting (Anderson, 1988;Brotherson, 2007;Crawford & Fischer, 1993;Moore, 1989; Seiffge-Krenke & Pakalniskiene, 2011), marriage (Hall & Adams, 2011;Moen, Bradford, Lee, Harris, & Stewart, 2015;Storaasli & Markman, 1990;Willoughby, Hall, & Goff, 2015), grandparenting (Waldrop et al, 1999), retirement (O'Rand & Farkas, 2002), and death (Maxymiv & Blankemeyer, 2001). Topics such as health issues (Cavanagh, Compton, Tluczek, Brown, & Farrell, 2010;M.…”