“This is Not Where I Belong!” The Emotional, Ongoing, and Collective Aspects of Couples’ Decision Making About Where to Live

Abstract

Decision making about where to live is becoming a salient part of many couple’s lives, with geographical mobility on the rise and increasing numbers of dual career couples. This article examines how couples decide where to live, using data from thirty-seven semi-structured interviews with individuals hi cross-national relationships, living in a city in the Western United States. The data reveal that emotions are important in decision making, that decision making tends to be on-going, and that there are numerous parties to the decision making process.

Couples Managing the Risk of Financing Long-Term Care

“…Research has examined general couple planning and decision-making in various financial situations including retirement (Behringer et al 2005;Moen et al 2006;Moen 1998, 2004), health promotion (Yorgason et al 2009), household decisions (Jianakoplos andBernasek 2008;Skogrand et al 2011;Zimmer 2009), work-family decisions (Zvonkovic et al 1994), marital adjustment (Cramer 2001), and geographic location of residence (Adams 2004). Similar to research on financial LTC planning, this research focused more on decision behaviors and less on intentions.…”

“…Research on general couple decision-making illustrates the importance of including both spouses in research on decision-making because spouses are not likely to have consensus in their self-reports (Adams 2004;Behringer et al 2005;Cramer 2001;Moen et al 2006;Smith and Moen 1998;Zimmer 2009). Spouses reported different levels of influence, power, and satisfaction during the decision-making process and these appeared to result in divergence in planning behaviors (Adams 2004;Jianakoplos and Bernasek 2008;Skogrand et al 2011;Smith and Moen 2004;Yilmazer and Lyons 2010;Zvonkovic et al 1994).…”

“…Spouses did not always agree with one another about the time of retirement for themselves and their spouses, which was indicated by the non-congruent couples. Cramer (2001) and Adams (2004) found that consensus with planning behaviors changed over time and was not static. Results showed couples agreed about their decision behaviors at one point in time and disagreed at another point in time or vice versa.…”

“…First, research on general couple decision-making indicates that planning behaviors among couples can be complex. For example, deciding when to retire as a couple (Behringer et al 2005;Smith and Moen 2004) or where to live as a couple (Adams 2004) were often difficult decisions for couples to make because of spouses' varying intentions and behaviors and their challenge of finding consensus with their decisions (Skogrand et al 2011). Financial LTC planning strategies also involve varying perceptions of intentions and behaviors that couples must communicate and make a decision about (Schaber and Stum 2007).…”

“…Spouses reported different levels of influence, power, and satisfaction during the decision-making process and these appeared to result in divergence in planning behaviors (Adams 2004;Jianakoplos and Bernasek 2008;Skogrand et al 2011;Smith and Moen 2004;Yilmazer and Lyons 2010;Zvonkovic et al 1994). Behringer et al (2005) examined joint retirement planning behaviors and created a typology of couples involving congruent and non-congruent couples.…”