Sociopsychological factors affecting the relationship satisfaction in young married couples

Abstract

Relationship satisfaction may be considered as a general assessment based on the emotional experience in marital relationships. The results of theoretical analysis show that the main and direct reason of negative emotions in relationships is frustration of psychological needs. Satisfaction of these needs in spouses’ life is connected with individual differences in attachment and love. Based on these ideas we suggested hypothesis that connection of attachment style with relationship satisfaction is explained by frustration of basic psychological needs of people with insecure attachment style. To check this hypothesis we tested 68 couples, 30 of them were married and 38 cohabited. Relationship satisfaction measured using RAS by Hendrick highly correlated with basic needs satisfaction (measured using Need satisfaction scale by La Guardia) and attachment style (measured using the Russian version of ECR by Sabel'nikova and Kashirskii). The results of structural equation modeling led to the conclusion that negative association of anxious attachment with relationship satisfaction was totally explained by frustration of basic needs (first of all, need for relatedness) while the negative effect of avoidant attachment was accounted for frustration partially. Also it was shown that people with avoidant attachment experience more frustration of need for autonomy in marital relationships. This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project 15-16-22003.