Conflict and love: predicting newlywed marital outcomes from two interaction contexts

Research on marital interaction has focused primarily on couples in conflict contexts to understand better processes associated with concurrent and longitudinal outcomes such as marital stability and quality. Although this work has consistently revealed particular emotions (e.g., contempt) or behavioral sequences (e.g., demand/withdraw) predictive of later marital distress, it largely has neglected to take positive contexts into consideration. The present longitudinal study begins to address this gap in the literature by directly comparing newlywed behaviors from a conflict-resolution interaction with those from a love-paradigm interaction to predict relationship satisfaction and divorce proneness approximately 15 months later. Results showed that actor and partner negative (contempt) and positive (affection) emotions elicited in both positive (i.e., love) and negative (i.e., conflict) interaction contexts emerged as unique predictors of relationship quality and stability for both husbands and wives. Moreover, using a linear growth model, the temporal course of positive emotion during the love context, but not the conflict context, was predictive of later relationship satisfaction. Implications for future marital research and intervention are discussed.